Foodways
The kitchen here answers two questions that a plains kitchen never has to. How do you feed several hundred people on a courtyard floor in a village with no market? And how do you eat for five months when nothing is growing? The first answer is the dham — a fixed vegetarian sequence built on rice, pulses and yoghurt, cooked overnight by hereditary botis in brass vessels and served in seated rows on leaf plates. The second is drying, smoking and fermenting: greens spread on slate roofs, meat left hanging in the smoke of a chimneyless hearth, apples and apricots sliced and cured, wheat dough kept alive with a starter so that bread can be raised in a cold room. Sourness is not grown locally and has to be brought in or gathered wild, which is why tamarind and amchur travel up from the plains and anardana comes off the hillside, and why an entire course of the feast is named simply khatta — the sour one.
Primary cooking medium
Desi ghee, and a great deal of it — a dham is judged partly by how much has gone inMustard oil for everyday cooking and picklingWalnut and apricot kernel oil in the upper valleys, closer to the Lahaul practice
Dominant sour agents
Dahi — the structural ingredient of madra and of half the feastImli, carried up from the plains for the khatta courseAmchur and anardana, the dried sour powders that store through winterLemon, and the chilli-lemon paste kept in jarsThe sour edge of fermented grain drinks, used in cooking as well as drunk
Spice register
Whole spices bloomed in ghee and left in — cassia, clove, black and green cardamom, bay, and the small Himalayan black cumin called kala zeera. Asafoetida replaces onion and garlic entirely in ritual food, and there is no tomato anywhere in the traditional repertoire. Chilli is present for colour and for the khatta rather than for heat, and the aromatic that most marks the upper valley is the ground walnut and poppy seed used as a stuffing rather than a seasoning.
Staple grains and carbs
Rice on the irrigated valley floor, historically the prestige grain and the base of the dhamWheat, raised with a live starter into siddu and babruMaize on the rain-fed slopesBuckwheat and amaranth on the high Seraj and upper Beas ground, where wheat will not ripenBarley, mostly for fermenting rather than for eating
Preservation methods
Sun-dried greens and gourd strips laid out on slate roofs in autumnMeat hung in the smoke column above a chimneyless hearth and left for weeksApple and apricot sliced and dried on the roof, and walnuts stored in their shells in the loftUrad badi shaped and hard-dried for use months laterAnardana, chillies and maize cobs strung under the eavesGrain kept in wooden kothi bins built into the upper storey of the timber houseLugdi and sur — rice and barley fermented into a mild drink that also keeps the grain usable
Signature techniques
Madra — holding yoghurt at temperature
Yoghurt is whisked smooth, brought to room temperature, and stirred into ghee-fried whole spices and cooked chickpeas or rajma off the boil, then held at a tremble and stirred one way without stopping until it thickens. Take it past a simmer and the protein curdles and the dish is gone. That single half hour of attention is the technical core of the whole regional cuisine, and the reason a dham needs a professional rather than a household cook.
Also found in: Kangra & Dhauladhar, Chenab Valley & Chamba, Kashmir Valley
The dham — a floor banquet in fixed order
Botis, a hereditary caste of Brahmin cooks, work through the night over wood fires in wide brass charotis, in the open, for several hundred guests. Nothing is plated in a kitchen: guests sit in long rows on the floor, each with a leaf plate, and servers walk the row adding one preparation at a time in a set order that ends with the sweet rice. The order carries the meal — there is no menu, and no one asks what is coming next because everyone already knows.
Also found in: Kangra & Dhauladhar, Chenab Valley & Chamba
Siddu — leavened, stuffed, steamed
Wheat dough is raised for several hours with a starter kept from the last batch, flattened, filled with a paste of ground walnut and poppy seed or of spiced urad, sealed, and steamed over water rather than baked or fried. Steaming is not incidental: it needs less fuel than an oven and works at altitude, and it produces a bread soft enough to be eaten by pouring melted ghee over it.
Also found in: Kangra & Dhauladhar, Kinnaur & Spiti, Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills
Grain fermentation with a herb starter
Cooked rice or barley is mixed with a dried cake of flour and herbs that carries the yeast and mould culture, packed into a vessel and left for a few days to make lugdi or sur — mildly alcoholic, sour, cloudy and drunk young. The starter cake is remade from the previous batch, so the culture is continuous across generations of a household.
Also found in: Kinnaur & Spiti, Ladakh & Zanskar, Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills
Hearth smoking and roof drying
A traditional kath-kuni house has no chimney. Smoke rises through the living floor and out of the roof, and the loft it passes through is a curing chamber — meat, maize, chillies and gourd hung in it for weeks. The slate roof outside does the other half of the work, holding sliced apple, apricot and greens through the dry autumn.
Also found in: Kinnaur & Spiti, Kangra & Dhauladhar, Kumaon