Ladakhi Food: The Long Goodbye

We’d spent our days in Leh looking for a good place which serves Ladakhi food. The usual social networks for tourists directed us to a popular place which served ddishes known in cities, some Tibetan, others not. The town was full of cafes and bakeries, and generic Indian food. We asked the dependable Mr. Kanlon, and he had an immediate answer: Namza. So we went there for our last lunch in Leh.

From outside it looked like a regular house. But when we passed the front door it opened into a kitchen garden, an urban farm if you wish. A wood and glass cabin was the dining area, perhaps eight tables, bright and cheerful in the afternoon light. The menu spoke of fresh ingredients from the local market and from the garden. We looked out: potato, tomato, beans, pak choy, were in evidence. One of the wait staff pointed out local herbs.

We turned to the menu. After ten days of looking at the wildflowers of Ladakh, I was beginning to wonder how much of it found its way into the kitchen. Often a lot of local plants go into food, but they are not considered to be suitable for guests. As a result, many of these interesting tastes drop out of restaurant menus. So I was happy to see that a nettle soup appeared on the menu. The soups all sounded very interesting, but I settled for the nettles because I wasn’t likely to taste this ingredient elsewhere. I’d not seen much in the way of meat in the local food, so it was interesting to see that they made sausages in house. That was clearly something else to try.

The Family had ordered khambir (the Ladakhi yeasty naan) with an yogurt dip which arrived at the table rather quickly. I shared a bit of it, but I held back, because I suspected that I’d over-ordered. The nettle soup had bits of soft chhurpi (the yak-milk cheese of these heights) and slivers of chicken in the broth. The sausages were redolent of herbs. All I needed after that was a dessert, but Ladakh does not really do desserts. There were stewed apricots on offer, and I took it (that’s the featured photo). It was perfect, just plain local apricot freshly stewed without additives.

Ladakhi food: The High Window

Outsourcing all the planning of a trip is not something I’d done before. For the trip to Ladakh we fixed the length of the stay, asked for two days of acclimatization, fixed a budget, and let an agent plan out the trip. As a result everything was a surprise. Fortunately, the hotels were pleasant surprises. We stayed in a superb hotel in Hunder, in the Nubra valley. Not only were the rooms utterly comfortable and pleasant, but also the architecture used only traditional materials and blended the structure into the landscape. And another perk, you could also eat on a terrace while looking out at a fantastic view.

The extreme heat of the previous few days had disappeared as soon as clouds blew in from the west. The temperature was just right with this cloud cover which did not result in rain. The only fly in the ointment? The menu had little in the way of Ladakhi food. Most guests were happy with parthas or idlis, geographical intruders, even if prepared well. The Family and I explored the small selection of local food. This hotel gave us a narrow view of the local food, a high window, if I have to keep using Raymond Chandler’s book titles to describe my exploration of the food of Ladakh.

Khambir, the Ladakhi version of the pan-Central Asian Naan

There were two main choices for breakfast: either kisir, which is a buckwheat chilla/dosa (the nearest English word would be pancake, although the French word crepe is a better description), or our auld acquaintance, khambir. The kisir was served with tsemik, which a herbed yogurt, on the side, so you had your bit of carbohydrates, fat, and protein for breakfast. The khambir (featured photo) came with a dollop of a local cheese which resembled a slightly aged ricotta. This cheese is called chhurpi here, but that’s a word that I’ve met across the Himalayas. It refers to such a wide variety of cheeses that I take it as a generic word for any cheese made from Yak milk.

It was a little windy, and I was glad to stand in front of the oven where these things were made. I’ve said before that Ladakhi food is an interesting combination of Tibetan and Central Asian cuisines. The khambir is the pinnacle of this ancient fusion. The dough is made from whole wheat flour, and fermented for a few hours after adding yeast. Small balls of the dough are flattened directly on the hot surface of the stove. I’ve seen it being rolled, but that could be a 20th century innovation. The design of the stove is at least a couple of centuries old. Traditionally the cast iron stove sits in the middle of the house, keeping it warm, and serving to cook as well as reheat food. This lady used the older method of flattening the ball of flour directly on the hot surface (the khambir is more crusty this way). It is then finished off on the coals. I had it with chhurpi, but it also tastes wonderful in the usual breakfast combination, with salty yak-butter tea.

Food in the Himalayas

Our flight landed in Bagdogra just before noon. We collected our baggage and left immediately. Lunch was in a typical nondescript highway restaurant near the Sevoke bridge. The eatery had a large menu (photo alongside), but often in small places like this, where two cooks fill all the orders, everything could taste the same. This particular place distinguished itself with its nice crisp rotis.

The genre of food does not change as you travel up in the hills. As a result, the food you eat in the eastern Himalayas usually tastes generic, and does not leave an impression. Even when you have climbed 4 Kms above sea level, you will often be handed a very similar menu unless you constantly remember to ask about the local food. Even then you are likely to get bowls of noodle soup and plates of momo (see photo below). At lunch this was our fate too.

Steamed momo is now pan-Indian in the same way as chicken lollipop, gobi Manchurian and masala dosa. Up in the mountains momo accompanied every lunch which we had. They mostly came with a bowl of extremely strong chili paste. We found this in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bhutan, and Sikkim; I wonder where it originated. [An article in Eurozine claims that momo comes from Mongolia: “It is possible to anecdotally define the borders of the Great Steppe’s influence by the places where people eat pierogi, a dish which comes from Central Asia.”] We found an interesting variation in a little eatery outside Ravangla where the momo was accompanied by a small bowl of hot soup. This was the first time I had this combination, and I liked it.

Half a year ago, while travelling in Arunachal Pradesh we discovered thenthuk. This is a soup usually made with handmade broad flat wheat noodles. The soup comes with vegetables, and chicken, pork or eggs, according to your taste. We have now learnt to avoid the ubiquitous bowl of Maggi noodle soup and ask for thenthuk instead. We had this on three days: each time in a different place. In Yuksom we tasted a soup with many different vegetables and thin hand made noodles. In Sombari Bazar we had one with eggs dropped into it. In Ravangla I had a smoked chicken with wonderful broad noodles almost like sheets of Lasagna. All the menus we saw attribute thenthuk to Bhutan. In the cold climate of the Himalayas, it makes sense to have lots of soup; not only to warm, but also to hydrate.

On a cold and drizzly afternoon in Yuksom we found a wonderful warm drink called chhang goh. This seems to have methi (fenugreek seeds) and rai (mustard seeds) fried in ghee, and mixed with pulp of fruits and chhang (rice wine). The Family and I shared a tall glass of this drink and agreed that we could have more.

One afternoon as we drove into a town called Sombari Bazar, we were lucky to notice a small eatery called Hotel Assampas. As we waited for our momos and thenthuk to arrive, resigned to looking at the chief minister’s face, we found a stream of housewives and schoolgirls troop in to eat momos. If this was a favourite with the locals, then we realized we had chosen well. The food was genuinely good. The counter was full of packed dry foods. Apparently they are snacks to accompany tea in the mornings. The packets were family sized, and we decided not to buy them. Now we regret it. On our next trip we will try them out.

I was prepared with a list of things to eat. Niguru with chhurpi turned out to be fiddlehead fern with local cheese; we’d eaten this earlier in Bhutan. We liked the gundruk, mustard greens with tomato and onion. I looked for sael roti but could not find it. It is probably similar to a paratha. The phagshapha is a stew of pork and radish with dried chilis thrown in as garnish. I couldn’t find it in the places we went to. Neither could I find shaphale, which is bread stuffed with chicken or pork. We had a superb spinach clear soup with eggs. Another local soup is made from nettles; but we did not find it. Maybe this is not the correct season for it. I had phing mushroom: wonderful glass noodles with mushroom. The first mouthful was very flavourful, but when the chilis hit my tongue I could not taste anything else for a while. With these few things I think we barely scratched the surface of the local cuisines: Bhutia, Lepcha and Nepali.

What we drank most of the time was tea. West Sikkim grows cardamom, and this is used liberally in the masala tea. The Family loves masala tea; she loved both the cardamom flavour and the version with ginger. I prefer my tea black, and was happy that little roadside stalls served up Darjeeling. We were too tired in the evenings to go out to the Kind of Shop that the sign alongside is about. We stuck to the bar in our hotel. It served a couple of Sikkimese beers: Dansberg and Hit, both produced by Yuksom breweries. We tried the Dansberg, which turned out to be a fairly bland lager. When in Sikkim Chhang is clearly the way to Goh.