Best of Pahari or Himalayan foothill vegetarian cuisine

Crisp mountain air, abundant river water and its rich soil yields a diverse range of food hails from the foothills of the mighty Himalayas. Cookbook author Veena Sharma highlights the vegetarian cuisine of the Garhwal people of the Himalayas. Known as the Pahari cuisine or food from the mountains it offers a rich harvest of herbs, grains and vegetables and is associated with wellness food. Here are some of the traditional recipes and foods with a modern twist that have made it to the urban table across India today.

Veena Sharma is the author of Vegetarian Cuisine from the Himalayan Foothills – Flavours and Beyond. She says the Himalayan foot hills provide a “culinary smorgasbord”. The flora and fauna, nurtured by the waters of the Ganges, offer super nutritive foods and a variety of legumes and beans and leafy vegetables like amaranth and spuds with Ayurvedic properties for healing and nourishing.

Himalayan bamboo shoots

This seasonal delicacy is made of cone-shaped bamboo shoots picked from the forests of Uttarakhand. The hill people treat the shoots before cooking them by peeling and slitting the shoots into short batons. They are boiled in water with a little salt and ash from burnt wood to rid them of toxins and then sauteed with onion and ginger. It is also stir-fried in a crumbly mixture of sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sweet basil leaves and green chillis.

Himalayan chutney

The Himalayan foothills offer a variety of greens like poi or spinach, chaulai or amaranth leaves, lingdaa or fiddlehead greens that are stir fried or sauteed and served. These can be coarsely ground to offer a pesto-like texture for a chutney or smoother varieties by grinding the seeds. Make a pesto with chironji or cuddapah almond, a kind of seed with a nutty flavor. Blitz it in rose water with beefsteak plant seeds with a bunch of your favorite greens like arugula, basil, rocket with green chillies and Himalayan pink salt. The other popular chutney across Rishikesh and elsewhere in the Himalayan foothills is the bhang chutney made of roasted poppy seeds with fresh ginger, green chillies, majoram leaves, Himalayan pink salt, fried pomegranate seeds, brown sugar and a drop of lemon juice.

Vegan raita

Indian cuisine across the country offers a variety of raita or yoghurt- based dips. Here is a vegan one that is prepared with a base of leguminous milk of bhatt or local soya found in these mountain areas. The soya milk is set into curds with homemade yoghurt culture and then whisked with a dash of salt, lemon juice, jeera or cumin powder. It can be served as a dip with your chips or a raita to go with local millet rotis.

Millet pudding

Jhangora or barnyard millet is a seed found in the hills of Uttarakhand. It can be boiled into a mush to be added to milk to make a creamy pudding, sweetened with jaggery found easily across Rishikesh.

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