BharatSangraha

Monpa & Tawang Belt · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt

Foodways

This is a dairy-and-grain kitchen at altitude, and everything in it is a solution to a short growing season and a long cold. Fat comes from the yak — butter churned into tea three times a day, and cheese dried until it will keep a year. The grain is buckwheat, barley, millet and maize rather than rice, because those are what ripen above 2,000 m. Vegetables are few and are preserved by drying and fermenting rather than pickling in oil. There is no oil-and-spice tradition of the kind found on the plain below and no dry masala; the seasoning vocabulary is chilli, fermented cheese, salt, and the sourness of a fermented green. The result reads as Bhutanese and Tibetan rather than Indian, because that is what it is.

Primary cooking medium

Yak butter, used in tea as much as in cookingCow and dzo butter and ghee in the lower valleysRendered animal fat and marrowMustard oil, only in the foothill belt where it can be bought cheaply from the plain

Dominant sour agents

Fermented cheese and wheyFermented leafy greens and turnip tops, dried and rehydratedChhang residue and the sourness of the brew itselfLocal citrus in the foothill belt

Spice register

Chilli and salt, and very little else. Whole dried chilli is treated as a vegetable rather than a spice, and the standard condiment, chamin, is chilli ground with fermented cheese. There is no garam masala, no tempering of whole spice in hot fat, and almost no turmeric — which is precisely the boundary between this kitchen and the Assamese one four hours downhill. Sichuan pepper and wild herbs appear in the lower valleys.

Staple grains and carbs

Buckwheat, both the sweet and the bitter kind — the bitter one for pancakesBarley, roasted and ground to tsampaFinger millet and foxtail milletMaize in the middle valleysWheat, and rice bought up from the plain for feast dishes

Preservation methods

Churpi — cheese pressed, cut and dried hard, strung and hung, keeping for a year or moreSoft fermented cheese, the base of the chamin condimentAir-dried yak and beef, hung in the roof space over the hearthDried and fermented leafy greens and turnip topsDried chilli, strung in ropes on the outside of the houseChhang and ara, which are both a drink and a way to store a grain surplus

Signature techniques

Churning butter tea (suja)

Brick tea is boiled long, then churned in a wooden cylinder with yak butter and salt until it emulsifies. It is drunk through the day, not with meals, and the cup is topped up rather than emptied. At altitude the point is calories, salt and warm liquid, in that order — it is food that happens to be a drink.

Also found in: Ladakh & Zanskar, Kinnaur & Spiti, Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills

Churpi drying

Curd is drained, pressed, cut into cubes and dried on a string over the hearth until it is as hard as wood. It is then either chewed for hours or dropped into a stew to soften. It turns a summer milk surplus into a food that survives a winter with no refrigeration and no salt.

Also found in: Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills, Ladakh & Zanskar, Siang & Adi Belt

Roasted-flour work (zan and tsampa)

Grain is roasted before it is ground, so the flour is already cooked and needs only hot water, tea or broth to become a meal. Zan is that flour stirred into boiling water to a thick porridge; tsampa is the barley version worked with butter tea in a bowl by hand. It is the fastest hot meal possible where fuel is scarce.

Also found in: Ladakh & Zanskar, Kinnaur & Spiti, Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills

Buckwheat noodle extrusion (puta)

Buckwheat dough is pressed through a perforated wooden or metal press directly into boiling water. Buckwheat has no gluten and cannot be rolled and cut like wheat, so the press exists because the grain does — the tool is dictated by the crop.

Also found in: Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills

Grain fermentation for chhang and ara

Millet, barley, maize or rice is cooked, cooled, mixed with a starter cake of wild yeasts and moulds, and left in a covered basket or pot. Water drawn through it gives chhang; distilled in a simple pot-over-pot still it gives ara, served hot and sometimes with egg or butter stirred in.

Also found in: Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills, Siang & Adi Belt, Naga Hills

Green fermentation and drying

Leafy greens, turnip tops and radish are wilted, packed tight in a container and left to sour, then dried. Rehydrated in winter they supply both the vegetable and the acidity in a season with neither. Nothing here is preserved in oil, because oil has to be carried up.

Also found in: Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills, Ladakh & Zanskar

The foodway signature of Monpa & Tawang Belt — cooking medium, souring agents, spice register, staple grains and the techniques that define it. (6)