Nepali cooking with Rachel Upton - Africa and Asia Venture

Nepali cooking with Rachel Upton - Africa and Asia Venture

Rachel Upton has just got back from 4 months in Northern India with the very special Lepcha community. As well as teaching in the local primary school and Lepcha Night school, Rachel helped her host family in the kitchen and picked up a few cookingtips. Here are her recipes for some classic Nepali style cooking from this region. 

Momos

Make flour and water dough, kneading it until it is roll-able.

Finely chop cabbage, onion, ginger and garlic.  Mix this all together with oil and spices (this was known as 'masala' - we never quite got to the bottom of exactly what it was, but i just use generic Indian herbs and spices like cloves, turmeric, cardamom etc). You can also add meat and chilli to this if you want.

Roll out the dough into lots of small circles, and place a spoonful of the mixture in the middle of each. Then fold the momo together into a little parcel, folding each end in, and then crimping the top together with your fingers.  Our hosts made this look like the easiest thing in the world; Ellie and I struggled horribly! That's basically it, you then cook the momos - they can be fried, boiled or steamed, but are usually steamed for about 30-40 minutes for meat momos and 20-25 minutes for vegetable momos! They're then served with a chilli sauce! Absolutely yummy! 

Dal

Fry the masala and chilli quickly in oil, put to one side. Chop up onion and tomato and fry this briefly in oil.

Soak and cook the lentils for as long as necessary.  Whisk the lentils to make sure they're separate.  Add in salt, the vegetables and the spices, and more water to serve.  Add enough water for it to be quite a thin consistency - this was how they liked it!

Potato curry

Fry the spices (again a general mix, a bit like garum masala but with extra spices - the more the better!) and chilli quickly. They always added colour (e.g. turmeric), but this didn't add to the flavour! Put to one side.

Chop cooked baby new potatoes into thin slices.  Chop baby tomatoes into quarters, chop cabbage into very thin strips.  Put to one side.

Chop onion, garlic and ginger very finely, and start frying this. Add the other vegetables and salt, along with more oil and some water and cook for a while on a simmer.

Add more water, then cook this some more until it has evaporated.

 

Thanks for the tips Rachel - we have tried the momos and they are amazing!!

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