Sikkim
State
Capital : Gangtok
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Sikkim has always been first on my list of places to plan a family trip to. I would excitedly tell my dad about it. He would give me a blank stare, shake his head as if pitying me and say that it’s too far. No amount of arguments will make him budge from the basic point that Sikkim is too far. Finally we would plan a 6 hour drive-in trip to a neighbourhood scenic place, spend two days there and get back home. And the Sikkim of my imagination, with its hills, Buddhist temples, red robed monks, clean roads; stays as it is, a dream. Though it is still a dream to be physically present there, my Dining Chair travels comes to my rescue to treat me to a taste of Sikkim.
Sikkim as a state shares its borders with three countries namely, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. So there will be some shared dishes between them. One of them is the Momo. Personally I associate momos with Tibetan food. Bangalore has a sizable population of Tibetans, and one of the pastimes that I share, especially with my cousin, is to eat Tibetan food. It is cheap and delicious. And momos are a fixed inclusion to our table at every Tibetan meal. The variables would be Tingmo, Shaptra, Shabaley, Thukpa, fried noodles etc. But a Tibetan meal without momos is unthinkable. That’s how I associated Tibet and momos. Now, finding a momo stall near home is not hard. That’s how popular it has become in most places in India. So you can imagine my shock when my friend from Goa looked at me quizzically when I told him about momos. ‘Whatever is that?’ was his reply. Either it isn’t famous in Goa or my friend was living under a gigantic rock. I am inclined to believe that it is the first reason.
I assume that everyone knows how a momo or a dumpling looks and tastes like. When you pop a momo in your mouth and its soft, squishy form comes in between your teeth, you desperately want to break into it, want it to release its spices, its juices, its vegetables or its meat. You allow those flavours to mix in your mouth, swirling and swirling, and when it goes down, there is this immense satisfaction and release of happy hormones. That, my friends, is nothing other than a food orgasm.
When I decided to make momos I had planned it as a meal. Who knew that the time taken to make a batch of sixty or so would take me 3 hours and the time taken to eat them would be 30 minutes? That’s the saddest part about cooking and eating. It’s something that my granny would tell me since childhood: the taste of the food is only for the few seconds that it is in the mouth; once it passes the mouth it is gone. So basically, there was no need for me to indulge in gluttony for those few seconds of pleasure. But life in general is unfortunately like that. While I know that my granny is right, I indulge in many of these similar pleasures quite decadently. Because the pleasure is greater in the anticipation, the hard work put into achieving it will make the pleasure that much sweeter.
This is how two of my fully vegetarian, mushroom momos with a tangy, umami tomato chutney, looked like before I gobbled them up.
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Well since momos are claimed by many places, I wanted to try something unique to Sikkim. I found a recipe for Phagshapa. It’s a pork dish wherein strips of pork are stewed together with radish. The only heat in the dish is from red chillies. When I prepare a non vegetarian dish I add many more spices. But I was pleasantly surprised at how this dish turns out with just one type of spice, unless you refer to ginger and garlic as spices too. And who knew that pork and radish could be friends? It is served with rice and it barely lasted long enough for me to mull over it.
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Some things end sooner than you expect and then you wonder how to replace those flavours with something new. The solution is to travel to a new place. Wonder where I’ll go next?
