Traditional recipes

Red or local rice cooked with pork, ginger, onion and turmeric. The best-known Khasi dish, eaten from breakfast to dinner.

Pork cooked in a dark, nutty gravy of roasted black sesame seeds, a signature Khasi dish.

A Khasi salad of boiled pork mixed with raw onion, ginger and green chilli.

Fermented soybeans cooked with pork, black sesame and spices. A pungent, much-loved Khasi dish.

A strong chutney of fermented dried fish ground with onion, chilli and ginger, eaten in small amounts with rice.

Soft, fluffy powdered rice steamed in a special pot, eaten with meat curries.

Soft steamed rice-flour cakes, a Khasi breakfast eaten with tea or with meat curry.

Sweet fried cakes of rice flour and jaggery, crisp outside and soft inside, made for festivals and celebrations.

Rice cooked with turmeric, ginger and onion until golden, a simple Khasi rice dish.

Steamed rice-flour cakes filled with spiced minced pork, a Khasi snack sold in tea shops.

Strong black tea with sugar and no milk, the everyday drink of the Khasi Hills, served with rice cakes.

Roasted black sesame ground with onion, chilli and salt into a smoky paste served with rice and meat.

A crisp, juicy root tuber peeled and eaten raw with salt and chilli, sold by street vendors in Shillong in winter.

A spicy Garo soup of dried fish with chillies, often served as an appetiser or alongside rice.

A Garo dish of meat, dried fish or vegetables cooked with kalchi, an alkaline water made from plant ash.

Pork cooked with fresh or fermented bamboo shoot and chillies, a favourite meat dish of the Garo Hills.

Sticky rice packed into green bamboo tubes and roasted over a fire, a traditional way of cooking rice in the Garo Hills.