Chefs and food writers make for perfect dining companions. Between them, after all, there can be no games of one-upmanship that often threaten to turn meals into competitive sport.
Chef Sabyasachi Gorai and I have been lunching companionably at Dzukou Tribal Kitchen in Delhi’s Hauz Khas, for over an hour now. We’ve ordered an impossible array of dishes that we can’t quite finish but have wanted to sample to feed our curiosity. We’ve exchanged titbits as to the happenings of the culinary world in India.
But more importantly, we’ve appreciated every flavour which has streamed out of the kitchen with an open mind, dissecting dishes without prejudice. It’s a perfect afternoon.
Uncompromised flavours
Dzukou has long been my favourite. It is a restaurant where time seems to stand still. It’s a jewel in Delhi that has remained relatively undiscovered and managed to consistently serve non-bastardised North-Eastern dishes that make no attempts to please the local Punjabi palate.
To step inside the restaurant is to be instantly enveloped in the smell of akhuni (fermented soyabean), that distinct ingredient that defines much of the cooking of Nagaland (it’s a favourite with the Seema tribe, I am told).
A strong and acquired taste, the akhuni can instantly flavour broths and curries or it can be ground into chutney with raja mirchi — that most deadly of chillies.
It is this chutney, utterly delicious, dangerously hot and laden with umami, that has always made me come back to Dzukou.
Foraging, farming and fermentation
I order it for Gorai and we get back to discussing the tradition of fermentation in India’s Northeastern cuisines. The chef is in the middle of a story, about a time when he was at a farmer’s market in Kohima. “So many of the ingredients there are completely unknown. It is only the local tribals who know how to use them,” he says. “There were these beans an old woman was selling. I picked one up and popped it in my mouth — and she started yelling. I was ready to buy it. But she refused: apparently it was fermented to a degree that it could cause hallucinations, and I was unfit to try it,” he laughs.
The tribal cuisines have so much diversity that it is hard to even list down all the ingredients. Some of these have no equivalents in English. However, in many ways, the cuisines and many of the fermented condiments resemble the cooking of other Asian cultures: Japan, Korea, China. If you have always appreciated these culinary traditions, it may be time to discover what is within the country, too.
Hip and healthy
Fermentation is a big word gastronomically today, with restaurants like Noma having turned one of the oldest ways of preserving food into high fashion. Hipsters have also discovered products like kombucha, kefir and tempeh (made from soybean, originally in Indonesia, and now increasingly used as a vegan meat substitute) as miraculous superfoods.
While the practical purpose of fermentation may have been preservation, a natural fallout is bacterial action that promotes a good gut at the very least. The intense flavours of many Northeastern cuisines come not from spicing, but from fermentation. While this edible chemical reaction is part of other cuisines in India too (think a dosa batter or pickling), in the Northeast, it becomes all pervasive.
From my favourite akhuni to the fermented greens that dominate Sikkim’s cooking, shidal, and the preserved condiment that defines Tripura’s cooking (fish rubbed with salt and mustard oil and kept in a clay pot for about a week), to the Mizo fermented pork fat et al, condiments are unique yet reminiscent of those kimchis or gochujangs we may have tried from “fashionable” Eastern cuisines. The only way to get acquainted with these is to go eat with an open mind. Try the dry fish preparations of the Khasis, Tungrymbai (fermented soyabean chutney which is at every Khasi stall), anishi -flavoured pork (made from yam leaves), khalpi (a cucumber product) from Sikkim, soidon (fermented bamboo shoot) from Manipur (which has an elaborate culinary tradition with a lot of vegetarian food too) and of course, all the fermented rice traditions (apparent also in the local brews). Savour these and embrace fermentation.
