Traditional recipes

A warming noodle soup with vegetables or meat in a clear broth, everyday food in the cold hills of Tawang and West Kameng.

Hand-pulled flat noodles torn straight into a simmering broth with greens, a homely Monpa soup made from a simple flour dough.

Steamed dumplings of thin wheat dough filled with minced meat or vegetables and cheese, served with a fiery chilli paste.

Thick, soft pancakes of buckwheat flour cooked on a griddle, a Monpa breakfast eaten with butter tea and chilli-cheese relish.

A thick, smooth dough-like porridge of finger-millet flour stirred into boiling water, eaten with vegetables, meat or chilli.

A spicy, creamy dish of fermented yak or cow-milk cheese (chura or churpi) cooked with chillies, onion and tomato.

Salted tea churned with butter into a rich, warming drink, served many times a day and offered to every guest in Monpa homes.

Crisp, twisted fried pastries made in large batches for Losar, the Monpa New Year, and offered at altars and to guests.

A sharp, smoky Apatani pickle of bamboo shoot, pork fat and king chilli, kept for weeks and eaten with rice.

A pungent chutney of fermented soybeans pounded with hot chillies, salt and ginger, eaten in small amounts with rice.

Strips of meat smoke-dried over the hearth and tossed with crushed hot chilli and salt, a long-keeping relish served with rice.

Pork cooked with sour fermented bamboo shoot, ginger and chilli in very little oil, a feast dish across Arunachal Pradesh.

Rice packed into green bamboo tubes with water and roasted over a fire, taking on the bamboo's fresh aroma.

Fresh river fish simmered briefly with ginger, chilli and wild herbs into a light, clear soup.

Chicken mixed with ginger, chilli and salt and slow-roasted inside a sealed bamboo tube over an open fire.

Sticky rice wrapped in large leaves and boiled or steamed into firm parcels that keep for a day's journey or work in the fields.

Seasonal greens and vegetables boiled with ginger, chilli and salt, the light everyday side dish of most Arunachali meals.