Traditional recipes

Steamed dumplings of thin wheat-flour wrappers filled with minced meat or vegetables, served with a fiery tomato and chilli sauce.

A warming noodle soup with chicken and vegetables in a clear, spiced broth, eaten across Sikkim in the cold months.

A sour, warming soup of gundruk, the fermented and dried leaves of mustard, radish and cauliflower, cooked with tomato and chilli.

A sour soup of sinki, fermented and sun-dried radish roots, a winter food of Sikkim’s farming families.

Strips of pork fat cooked with radish, dried chillies and ginger, without much oil or spice, a classic Bhutia dish.

A ring-shaped, deep-fried sweet bread of ground rice, sugar and ghee, crisp outside and soft inside, made for Tihar and Dasain.

Tender fiddlehead ferns gathered from forest streams, cooked with chhurpi, the soft local cottage cheese, and green chillies.

A curry of kinema, sticky fermented soybeans with a strong aroma, cooked with onion, tomato and chilli and eaten with rice.

Half-moon breads stuffed with spiced minced meat and cabbage and deep-fried until golden, a Tibetan and Bhutia snack.

A fiery pickle of Sikkim’s GI-tagged dalle chillies preserved in mustard oil with fenugreek, mustard and salt.

A thick green soup of young stinging-nettle leaves cooked with cornmeal or rice flour, garlic and chilli.

A dark, thick flatbread of finger millet flour cooked on a griddle, a traditional food of farming families in the Sikkim hills.

Brewed tea churned with butter and salt into a warm, savoury drink, a daily drink of Bhutia and Tibetan families in high Sikkim.

A tangy curry of fermented bamboo shoots with potato and black-eyed beans, cooked in mustard oil.

Crisp fried pastries of flour, butter and sugar, twisted into shapes and made in large batches for Losar, the Tibetan New Year.

A thick, warming soup of several kinds of sprouted beans, cooked with spices, made for the festival of Janai Purnima.

A hearty soup of flat noodles pulled by hand straight into a vegetable broth, a Tibetan-style winter meal in Sikkim.