Perhaps the most satisfying food coma comes at the end of a hectic field reporting day.
When Kritika Pant and I were travelling to Sikkim earlier in the year, we visited Dzongu, a region dominated by the Lepcha tribe on the left bank of the river Teesta. A Lepcha family hosted us in their home stay, from where on a clear day one could spot the Kanchendzonga peak.
After rushed mornings spent finishing shoots and interviews, dinners became an occasion we truly savoured. During the two nights there, our host whipped up fresh produce into hot meals that we devoured over conversations in their kitchen which had one small dining table along the window that overlooked the Himalayas.
One night, we had soup made of locally made fermented cheese – it tasted a little like the North Indian dish, kadhi, which is made of chickpea flour and buttermilk. Lightly spiced, the soup was served with warm rice, along with a semi-gravy chicken with tomatoes and warmed us up on the cold night.
The next day, I saw our host’s relative, a young boy, come over with a packet full of fiddlehead ferns that he had harvested. By evening, this was stir fried with just salt, retaining its stark green. While this cooked, our host took a handful of spicy “dalle” chillies – stout, red chillies. She crushed it on a stone slab with a pestle to produce the perfect kick to the fiddlehead fern served with rice and the fermented soup, along with a spiced, dry chicken dish.
On our last night, we celebrated with a drink called chi made of fermented millet.
The purring cat curled up on my lap was the unexpected ingredient that made it all perfect.
