BharatSangraha

Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt

Foodways

This is a fermentation cuisine, and the reason is logistical rather than aesthetic. A mid-montane village with one growing season, no salt source of its own and roads that close for weeks needed a way to hold vegetables, soybean, milk and grain through winter without salt, sugar or refrigeration. Four separate microbial systems do that work — lactic-acid souring for leaf and root (gundruk, sinki), a Bacillus fermentation for soybean (kinema), acid-and-rennet curd for milk (churpi), and an amylolytic mould-and-yeast starter cake for grain (marcha, which drives tongba and raksi). The result is a kitchen whose sourness is bacterial rather than fruit- or tamarind-based, which is what separates it from every plains cuisine below it.

Primary cooking medium

Mustard oil at the lower and middle altitudesButter and yak butter above the treeline, and in Bhutia and Tibetan-derived cookingPork fat, rendered and used as a cooking medium in itselfSoybean oil and, increasingly, refined oil in town kitchens

Dominant sour agents

Gundruk and sinki liquor — lactic-acid sourness from fermented greens and radish, the primary souring agentChuk / churkey — reduced sour paste made from the whey left after churpiLemon and the local nibu, particularly in sadeko dressingsTomato, used as an acid rather than as a base, mostly in acharFermented bamboo shoot (tama) at the lower altitudes

Spice register

Narrow, hot and aromatic rather than broad. Dalle khursani — the round cherry-shaped chilli — supplies almost all the heat, usually as a pounded achar on the side rather than in the pot; timmur, the Himalayan Sichuan pepper, supplies a numbing citrus note the plains do not use; jimbu, coriander seed, ginger and garlic do the rest. There is no long garam masala tradition here, no frying of powdered spice into oil, and turmeric appears mainly as colour. Against Assam's ou tenga sourness and Bengal's panch phoron, the signature is sour-hot-numbing.

Staple grains and carbs

Rice at the lower and middle altitudes, including the red rice of the valleysMaize, ground for dhindo and roasted wholeFinger millet (kodo) — the grain of tongba and raksi, and of hill dhindoBuckwheat (phapar) in the high valleys, eaten as bread and as noodleWheat flour for momo wrappers and thukpa, largely brought up from the plains

Preservation methods

Gundruk — leafy greens wilted, crushed, packed airtight and soured, then sun-driedSinki — radish taproot fermented in a leaf-lined earth pit, then driedKinema — soybean fermented in a leaf-wrapped basket, then dried into cakesChurpi — milk curd pressed, sliced and smoke-dried into a stone-hard block that keeps for yearsMasyaura — sun-dried lentil-and-vegetable nuggets, made in the autumn sun for the winterAir-dried and smoke-hung meat over the kitchen fire, especially pork and yakLarge cardamom cured over a direct-fire bhatti kiln, which is also what makes it keep

Signature techniques

Gundruk souring

Mustard, radish or rayo leaves are wilted for a day, crushed, rammed hard into an earthen pot or a pit to exclude air, sealed and left seven to ten days for lactic-acid bacteria to sour them, then sun-dried. It uses no salt at all — the acidity alone is the preservative, which is precisely why it took hold in a range with no salt of its own.

Also found in: Dooars & Terai, Monpa & Tawang Belt

Sinki pit fermentation

Whole radish taproots are shredded and pressed into a pit dug in dry ground, lined with leaves and capped with earth, then left three to four weeks. A pit is a better fermenter than a pot at altitude because the ground holds a steadier temperature than a winter kitchen does.

Also found in: Dooars & Terai

Kinema soybean fermentation

Boiled soybeans are lightly crushed, wrapped in fern or banana leaf inside a bamboo basket, kept warm beside the hearth for one to three days and taken out sticky and strongly ammoniacal. The inoculum comes from the leaves and the basket, not from a starter. It is the western end of a Bacillus-fermented soybean belt that runs through the eastern Himalaya into the Northeast hills, Myanmar and Japan.

Also found in: Dooars & Terai, Khasi & Jaintia Hills, Naga Hills

Churpi pressing and smoke-drying

Buttermilk left after churning is heated until it curdles, strained through cloth, pressed under a weight, cut into cubes and hung in the smoke above the hearth for weeks. Soft churpi is eaten fresh as a curd; hard churpi is not chewed but held in the cheek for an hour at a time, and is the herder's ration.

Also found in: Monpa & Tawang Belt

Marcha starter culture

A cake of rice flour mixed with wild herbs and an old starter, dried and stored, carrying both an amylolytic mould that converts starch to sugar and a yeast that ferments it. One cake does the work of malting and brewing at once, which is how a household with no equipment makes tongba, jaanr and raksi from millet or rice.

Also found in: Dooars & Terai, Monpa & Tawang Belt

Bhatti curing of large cardamom

Capsules are dried over a direct wood fire in a bhatti shed for a day and a half to two days. The smoke enters the pod, which is why Indian large cardamom carries a smoky, almost tarry note that flue-cured cardamom does not — a processing difference, not a varietal one.

Also found in: Dooars & Terai

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