Farsi ko biya ko achar
I have been thinking for long, by long I mean years and
years to do some research about Nepali traditional foods. Whenever we type
Nepali food, mostly food from Nepal is displayed in the internet. I belong to a
small Himalayan district in the state of West Bengal, India, so basically I am
an Indian Nepali. Our traditional foods have almost disappeared from our table
we are more influenced by other cultures. Look at Momo aka dumpling, it was
introduced by the Tibetan refugees and now it has become one of our most loved foods.
There is a joke in Darjeeling, before
the joke I will tell you that eating out is not in our culture majority of the
people still have their main meals at home. It’s the snacking that happens in
the market .I remember in the 80’s when I was a kid my parents would take us
for a bowl of thukpa (soupy noodles) or a plate of momo after a movie. That was
it! So here is the joke (weirdness of Darjeeling
jokes, mostly its only the locals who understand ha ha).... Finally The
joke.... we (we as in people of Darjeeling) enter a restaurant and the waiter
gives us the menu we take 10 minutes to look at the menu from top to bottom reading
all the dishes the hotel has to offer and at last we order a plate of momo ha
ha ha .....
I am not here to
revive our food culture but I would like to find out more so that they do not
disappear from the face of this earth. I am more curious at this point.
Growing food in the hilly terrain is a challenge and people
make do with whatever they have. We don’t have the luxury of beautiful ingredients
but look for nutritious and fulfilling meals. So I am in search of those simple
fulfilling meals of the past. But for now I would like to give a simple recipe
of the humble pumpkin seed which has emerged as a super food of today. For
people in olden days it was to utilise every bit of what they had.
For this recipe I have made changes to the
original recipe by adding skin removed pumpkin seed you get in the market and
replaced lemon juice with chaat masala.
Ingredients
Pumpkin seed 1 cup(whole seed with cover)+ 1 table spoon of pumpkin
seed (skin removed)
An inch of dry ginger
Garlic 5-6 cloves
Red chilly powder 1 tablespoon (or as per your heat
tolerance)/or whole dry red chilly 4 nos
Sesame seed 1 tablespoon
Chaat masala 1 tsp (please adjust to taste it has to be a
hint of tanginess)
Salt to taste
Method
Remove the pumpkin seed from the pumpkin wash it and let it
dry. You can collect it over a period of time. What I do is collect wash, dry
and roast slightly in oven and store till I get another batch of pumpkin seed
.If you cut a big pumpkin you can collect at a go.
I had half roasted the pumpkin seed about 5 to 7 mins in
microwave oven before roasting in the gas .You can do it directly in the gas
stirring it so that it does not burn in one side only in low flame. Roast it
evenly till you start to hear the popping sound of the seeds.I added the whole dry ginger 1 whole chilly and garlic as well when I roasted the seeds.
Remove from heat and let it cool.
Dry grind all the ingredients together till you get a fine
powder, taste for salt and the tanginess and adjust .Store in clean glass jar. You
can keep it outside or in fridge for longer life.
Enjoy !
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