Crowing roosters and pink-streaked skies
suggest it’s time for early rousers to stir. But the clock shows barely
05:00 even though the light seems much too bright for a wintry morning.
Less than an hour later, the entire hilltop city of Aizawl is awash in
sunlight, the sudden warming of air causing clouds to scurry down to
colder valleys below – a common spectacle in these hills at this time of
year.
The landscape, people, culture and cuisine here differ completely from all that the mainland is known for
This
seemingly horological discrepancy is a part of daily life in this
Indian region collectively called the Northeast, a geographic salient
that extends from the foothills of the Himalayas just south of the
Tibetan Autonomous Region all the way down to the flood plains of
Bangladesh, with Myanmar to its east. Although the borders and clocks of
the eight states that make up this disparate region are bound to India,
there is little else to suggest the fact. The landscape, people,
culture and cuisine here differ completely from all that the mainland is
known for.
Like many of its neighbouring states, Mizoram
became part of India following independence from British rule in 1947.
Its rugged hills were once considered wild and untameable because of the
warring headhunting hill-tribes who lived there. After forceful
military subjugation of the tribes by the British, Welsh missionaries
were sent in to
convert many of the tribes to Christianity.
Today, close to 90% of Mizoram’s inhabitants are Christians, with
church steeples an indelible part of the concrete mass of buildings
precariously perched on the steep slopes of the state capital, Aizawl.
While
Mizos may have given up their animist gods, they’ve clung on to their
tribal cuisine. Various stews of roots, shoots and leaves eaten with
hearty accompaniments of meat and rice still dominate the two main meals
of the day – a late breakfast and an early dinner eaten just before
sundown. In this remote frontier, closer both in air and road miles to
Bangkok than the national capital of New Delhi, curry is an alien
concept replaced instead by
bai, a kind of brothy stew that
serves as the quintessential essence of a Mizo meal. Just as its
spice-laden mainland equivalent has many different variations, recipes
for bai are as diverse as the produce that locals harvest for the table.
Thanks
to the Chinese, the bamboo shoot may have become one of world’s most
widely eaten shoots. But Mizos also love the shoots and tender stems of
many other plants, including banana, slender cane, taro and those of an
indigenous family of the banana that Mizos call
saisu, or
Musa glauca in Latin.
Seasonal local favourites include indigenous wild plants such as
baibing, the spiky inflorescence of a local variety of
Alocasia fornicate
– the same family as anthuriums and peace lilies. Besides more exotic
species, the leaves and stems of innocuous everyday plants such as
passionfruit, pumpkins, yams, beans and squash are more favoured than
their fruits, each season determining which part is harvested for the
table.
Some favourite dishes include
maian bai, young pumpkin leaves stewed with a few strands of dried leaves of the rosella plant that locals call
anthur; or
behlwai bai,
young string bean leaves simmered in a pork stock with a bit of rice to
thicken the broth, and tempered with a dash of fermented pork fat
called
sa-um to finish.
Common leaves and herbs used to add extra flavour to bai include
chingiit, a close relative of the Sichuan pepper; and what Mizos call
bahkhawr,
whose spiky leaves are known as culantro or Asian cilantro in English.
Also favoured are the flowers of an indigenous plant called lengser or
the Mizo lomba (
Elsholtzia blanda). Its sharp citrusy flavour is often compared to that of the lemongrass used in South-East Asian recipes.
While
the Mizo diet may read like a botanical index, no meal is complete
without generous portions of meat such as pork, chicken and beef and
their smoked varieties. Classic recipes include smoked pork boiled with
mustard leaves that add a distinct peppery zing to the rich broth; and
sawchair,
a rice-based, congee-like stew made from chicken or pork with strands
of anthur to infuse tangy notes. Blood sausages and herby chutneys made
from the more gristly animal parts usually show up as special items in
feasts. Ginger, garlic and turmeric added to stir-fried vegetables like
potatoes or cauliflower are perhaps the only shared spices with the
Indian mainland.
The origins of Mizo people are shrouded in
mystery, but they are believed to have migrated over centuries from
South China and still share close language, ethnic and culinary ties
with many hill tribes of west Myanmar. Their widespread use of fermented
soybean, known locally as
bekang, as a flavouring for stews or
mixed with chillies as a side dish for rice also suggests ancient
culinary links with East Asian countries as far as Korea and Japan.
As
they did in ancient times, Mizos prefer their bekang made from tiny
soybeans imported from Myanmar, according to 78-year-old Aizawl bekang
maker, Zakiamloa, who like most Mizos uses only one name. Mizo bekang is
not unlike Japanese natto,
though it’s less pungent and also less slimy. Fermenting bekang is a
painstaking process that involves soaking and steaming the soybeans
overnight and leaving them on a warm hearth for three days on dried
leaves of the
Callicarpa arborea tree (locally known as
hnakiah) to aid fermentation, before portions are neatly wrapped up in fresh banana leaves for sale.
“I’ve
built my house and raised my children with bekang,” said Zakiamloa, who
believes little has changed in the Mizo diet for centuries, though
daily meals nowadays would have been the celebratory feasts of their
ancestors. Despite the recent arrival of fast-food chains like KFC, he
believes it’s the Mizo dedication to their tribal diet that has helped
many traditional food producers like himself run successful businesses.
Most outside food, even common Indian breads like puris and rotis or the
widely sold Tibetan momo dumplings and fried noodles, are only eaten as
snacks between meals.
Due to its geographic remoteness, much of the
cuisine and culture of the Northeast remain a mystery to most Indians,
let alone foreigners. But fans of South-East Asian cuisine would
probably love the yet-undiscovered tastes of Mizo food, believes
Khawlzamtei, who heads a Mizo food processing start-up called
Zoei. She believes the herby textures and savoury flavours that Mizos call
hang, a word that can be compared to the Japanese concept of umami, could find favour with many fans used to the range of flavours in the subtle to intensely earthy notes of Asian cooking.
For most mainland Indians used to spice, Mizo food could certainly be an acquired taste
“For
most mainland Indians used to spice, Mizo food could certainly be an
acquired taste. But for those of us who discover it and who’ve been
brought up on it, it’s something that we can’t live without”, said
Khawlzamtei, who spent five years as a pharmacy student in Chandigarh, a
North Indian city known for classic Indian curries like butter chicken,
palak paneer and chole masala. “While [mainland] Indian food is tasty,
it’s always spicy. Spices overpower all tastes and we Mizos can’t handle
too much of it,” she said.
The Mizo shyness for Indian spices
belies their love for chilli, which is believed to have been introduced
here overland from South-East Asia as well, rather than via the sea
routes that first brought chilli to
the ports of India in the 16th Century.
A meal is incomplete without at least one fiery chutney, often just a
mix of crushed chillies and various other herbs and spices like garlic
and ginger, eaten in small pinches with mouthfuls of rice. In fact,
Mizoram recently – and successfully – campaigned for a
Geographical Indication of Origin for a local variety of bird’s eye chilli, underscoring its importance to Mizo cuisine.
With
more Mizos leaving their home state for education and employment
opportunities, Mizo recipes are also crossing their hilly frontiers.
However, the unavailability of ingredients outside the state poses a
challenge to its spread, and often leaves homesick Mizos hankering for a
taste of home. It was the funny anecdotes from friends and
acquaintances running into customs issues for carrying strange edibles
to the US, Australia and parts of Europe that prompted Khawlzamtei to
start her business processing and packaging dehydrated and properly
labelled Mizo vegetables. Her customers are mainly Mizos, but demand is
growing.
Khawlzamtei’s background in pharmacy has also
cultivated an interest in the medicinal properties of many plants Mizos
consume as food. She believes many regular Mizo vegetables, like
kahwtebel (
Trevesia palmate), whose buds, flowers and roots are
known for their antioxidant
and healing properties, especially for aiding post-partum recovery, and
local varieties of exotic spices such as sumac, also used extensively
in Middle Eastern cooking, have an untapped export potential for both
their gastronomic and medicinal properties.
As in many traditional
close-knit societies in developing regions, dining out in Mizoram is
usually only done out of necessity, such as when travelling. Locals on
the move may share tables at basic roadside restaurants, where common
traditional dishes are unceremoniously plonked in the middle alongside
individual plates of rice. While these traditional restaurants offer
hearty, tasty meals and compete with each other in the number of side
dishes offered, the often-rudimentary settings and presentation can turn
non-intrepid souls off. But things are slowly changing in Aizawl.
Once
catering only to give Mizos a taste of outside food such as Tibetan
momos and noodles or South Indian dosas, several restaurants are now
serving Mizo food in more tasteful settings than roadside digs. The Mizo
meal at
Red Pepper
in Aizawl arrives on a banana leaf placed on a traditional bamboo
platter with the dry items delicately arranged around the rice, while
accompanying stews and meat are served in separate bowls and plates. The
restaurant decor is themed around a traditional Mizo village with
bamboo woven walls and thatched roofs. Restaurant owner Zodinpuia said
this allows visitors a taste of Mizo food and culture, but surprisingly,
a growing number of his clients are also Mizo families.
“More and more Mizo families like to take their
families for special outings and enjoy the experience of eating
traditional food in a nice setting,” he said, adding that most days,
however, visitors from other Indian cities form a third of his
clientele.
With easier access by air from major Indian cities since Mizoram’s first and only airport was built in 1998, as well as the
opening of the borders with Myanmar
for overland tourists from South-East Asia, tourism is seen as a
growing sector across once-isolated Northeast India. More young people,
such as the servers at Red Pepper, are getting formal training in the
hospitality sector. And it may not be long before Mizo cuisine receives
the attention it deserves, crossing the borders of these rugged hills
and spreading down to the plains to join the wide array of gastronomic
delights that India is famous for.
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