Foodways
The organising chemistry of this kitchen is alkaline, not acidic. Kalchi — an alkali leached from the ash of burnt banana stems, plantain skins or cotton-tree wood — is filtered and used as a cooking liquid, and it does what a souring agent does elsewhere in India but from the opposite end of the pH scale: it softens tough greens and tubers, saponifies fat so a broth thickens without oil, and turns everything a characteristic yellow-green. Almost nothing is fried. Meat, greens and rice are boiled or steamed, dried fish supplies the savoury depth, chilli supplies the heat, and added oil is close to absent from the traditional repertoire. The result is a cuisine that reads as plain on paper and is not, because the flavour is built by fermentation, smoke and alkali rather than by fat and spice.
Primary cooking medium
Very little added fat — boiling and steaming are the defaultPork fat where it appears, rendered from the meat in the pot rather than added to itMustard oil in the northern foothills, where the Assam plains kitchen begins
Dominant sour agents
Lime and wild citrus, including the small hill orangesFermented bamboo shoot, in the wetter interiorSouring is marginal. This is an alkaline cuisine, and the acid register that dominates Assam a hundred kilometres north is largely absent here — kalchi occupies the structural place that ou tenga or thekara occupies there.
Spice register
Chilli, ginger, garlic and the local herb sam-sweng, used fresh and whole. There is no ground spice blend, no tempering step and no browning stage. Dried fish, nakham, does most of the work a spice paste does elsewhere, and roasted rice powder does the work a thickener does. Turmeric appears, but sparingly compared with the Jaintia hills next door.
Staple grains and carbs
Rice — both ordinary and minil, the sticky variety used for festival and travel foodMillet, historically the jhum crop and still grown for brewingJob's tears, grown on jhum plotsMaize and cassava on the lower slopes
Preservation methods
Nakham — fish split, smoked hard over the hearth and stored, then broken into brothsHearth-smoked pork and game, hung permanently above the fireChu — rice fermented into beer, which is how a harvest surplus is bankedBamboo shoot fermented in a covered potSun-dried chilli and ginger from the jhum plot
Signature techniques
Kalchi ash-alkali extraction
Dried banana stems, plantain peel or cotton-tree wood is burnt to a white ash, the ash is packed into a funnel of leaves or cloth, water is poured through it, and the alkaline filtrate is caught below. That liquid, kalchi, then goes into the pot in place of some of the water. It tenderises fibrous greens and tubers, emulsifies what fat is present so the broth thickens on its own, and gives the dish its colour. It is the same principle as Assamese khar, arrived at independently or shared across the foothills — the ash source differs and so does the intensity.
Also found in: Brahmaputra Valley, Naga Hills, Mizo–Kuki–Chin Hills
Bamboo-tube cooking (brenga)
Meat, water, herbs, chilli and salt are sealed into a length of green bamboo and set at an angle over the fire. The internode holds the steam, the green wall does not burn through before the contents are cooked, and the bamboo itself flavours the water. Nothing is washed up afterwards, which is the point on a jhum plot far from the house.
Also found in: Naga Hills, Mizo–Kuki–Chin Hills, Tripura Hills & Plains, Brahmaputra Valley
Dried-fish broth building
Small fish are gutted, split, and smoked over the hearth until they are hard and dark. Broken into a pot of boiling water with chilli they yield nakham bitchi — a thin, extremely savoury, extremely pungent broth that is drunk alongside rice. It is the region's umami source, and it works because smoke-drying concentrates glutamates that fresh fish would not deliver.
Also found in: Tripura Hills & Plains, Mizo–Kuki–Chin Hills, Naga Hills
Roasted rice powder (pura)
Rice is dry-roasted and pounded to a coarse flour, then stirred into a simmering pot. It thickens without fat, carries a toasted aroma, and lets a boiled dish take on body — the same job a browned roux or a nut paste does in kitchens that use oil.
Also found in: Brahmaputra Valley, Tripura Hills & Plains
Hearth-smoking
A permanent rack above the fire holds meat and fish, which cure slowly in the smoke and heat of daily cooking. It costs nothing extra, works through the monsoon when no drying is possible outdoors, and produces the hard smoke-cured pork that goes into winter stews.
Also found in: Khasi & Jaintia Hills, Naga Hills, Mizo–Kuki–Chin Hills
Chu brewing with a starter cake
Cooked rice is spread to cool, dusted with a powdered starter cake of rice flour and herbs carrying the yeast and mould culture, packed into a covered pot with leaves, and left to ferment. Sweet and low in alcohol after a couple of days, drier and stronger after a week. The starter is made at home and passed between households, so a village's beer has a lineage.
Also found in: Khasi & Jaintia Hills, Naga Hills, Brahmaputra Valley