Vive La Nouvelle Cuisine Tibétaine!

I’ve always felt Tibetan cooking was not as bad as some people thought. But you could say I grew up on that food and am biased, which is true. So I was flabbergasted when Sandrine from work told me over lunch that she loves Tibetan food. And not only did she take notice of the existence of something like Tibetan cooking she even said it was her preferred cuisine. Mind you, this was coming out of the mouth of a well-travelled French woman.

When I asked her what her favourite Tibetan dishes were she replied: “You know, those Momo, they are so delicious and also that curry with the chickpeas, absolutely delicious!”

Sandrine is a commuter who works out of town for three days and then returns to the countryside for the remainder of the week to be with her family. When in town, she stays in a small room with no kitchen and eats out regularly.

 “Is it authentique?”

Gasp!

Depending on your viewpoint, it could or could not be.

My reflex was: “Momo is as authentic as can be, chérie. We are the Land of Dumplings, the one and only Momo Country; our babies can say “Momo” before they can say “Mama” - and chickpea curry is fake!”

Momo

But what I actually said was more tempered: “Yes, it’s authentic. Momo is a typical dish. The chickpea curry is more contemporary Tibetan-style cooking, must be a specialty of that restaurant.”

Honestly, why should Tibetan cooking exhaust itself with classical best-sellers such as Momo or Shapalé?

Modern-day Tibetans enjoy the advantages of a globalised economy which obviously found its way also into many restaurants and private kitchens all over the planet: When we think about it, contemporary Tibetan cooking is as varied, nutritious and appealing as never before. In real life, Tibetan cooking has long been better than its reputation. Chickpea curry is only the beginning! 

So while our cuisine admittedly didn’t start out as la crème de la crème who says it has to stay that way until doomsday?

Tibetan cooking has its humble origins in the simple diet of farmers and herders who subside on lumps of dough (Pak), salty tea with butter in it (Bodcha), and dried raw meat (Shakam). But our ancestors have also continuously been adding new dishes to their menu that became “Tibetan” in the course of time. Even typical foods such as good old Momos or the popular lamb and potato curry (Shamdrè) were foreign imports at one point.

Likewise, should we not consider Indian Dal Bhat a typical Tibetan food by now? For so many Tibetans abroad it’s a familiar dish. Along the same lines that funny Chinese jelly-salad mish-mash known as Liangfen should be included too. When my relatives in Tibet come into town for business, their day is done only after slurping a bowl of spicy Liangfen before they head back home. Boy, did my dad miss Liangfen when he came to this country first! He was so desperate for it he used corn starch since mung bean starch was hard to come by in those days.

Liangfen

Both Dal and Liangfen have also been thoroughly Tibetanised in name: Dal for us is Dali and Liangfen is also called Leping or Labing. The popular pickled radish we call sönlabu is also a Chinese import as the treacherous name reveals. Would it ever cross our mind to not consider it a typical Tibetan dish although suan luobu (“sour radish”) is Chinese through and through as well as all the other pickled vegetables called yancai? In point of fact the Tibetanised mispronunciation is the ultimate indicator that these dishes have become “ours”. For once we can say, in culinary terms, China is part of Tibet!

"Sönlabu"

So Tibetan cooking has always imported foreign foods and then naturalised them. The only difference between then and now is the improved, easy access to foreign foods and ingredients in our times. The trend confirms it: Tibetan cooks combine indigenous ingredients with a whole range of traditionally foreign ones to create new dishes for the Tibetan dinner table. Contemporary Tibetan cooking is evolving faster than in the old days and chances are it offers something for everyone’s taste.

I’m not much of a cook but as a married woman with children I simply have to cook regularly, so better try to do a good job in providing wholesome and tasty meals. I sometimes am also a wannabe nouvelle cuisine tibétaine cook. In addition, I try to pay attention to quality ingredients that meet Buddhist standards of avoiding harm: I opt for local, organic and fair trade produce; it’s more expensive but that’s supposed to be part of my practice of incorporating Dharma into daily life. Whatever waste is left from cooking is systematically recycled and properly composted. The habit comes in handy especially during these days when we’re in the middle of Saka Dawa, ha ha!

Happy hens

Enough theorising now!

Check out three real-life, field-tested recipes out of Mountain Phoenix’ green gourmet kitchen which expand the traditional Tibetan culinary experience and perhaps help to get a tiny step closer to enlightenment by starting out right with our dinner plates  - served with some personal anecdotes as a side-dish:

Precious Banana Garland 

(neo-Tib: Rinchen Banana Trengwa)

Precious Banana Garland

250 g soft butter

150 g brown sugar

1 pinch of salt

5 egg yokes

grated skin of 1 lemon

500 g ripe Bananas

4 tablespoons of lemon juice

1 shotglass of liquor

100 g Tsampa

80 g flour

15 g baking powder

75 g grounded almonds or hazelnuts

5 egg whites

Grease cake-pan and heat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius. Mix the butter and sugar; add egg yokes, grated skin of lemon and stir; peel and squash bananas, add liquour (use Arrak if you have or Cognac, Rum, Whiskey, anything will do) and lemon juice and mix; add the banana mix and sift flour with baking soda over the batter, add Tsampa, ground nuts and stir well; beat egg whites and gently fold into the batter; fill batter into cake-pan and bake for 70 – 80 minutes.

Of course the banana is not an indigenous Tibetan fruit. One of my friends was asked by a nomad who saw them pick-nicking in the grassland: “Aja, what’s that hand-like looking thing?” But where would all the cuisines in the world be if all their foods were cooked with indigenous ingredients only? The banana is as common in Tibet as anywhere else and is usually called xiangjiao. India-Tibetans know their banana inside out calling it kera; the politically over-correct too eat bananas opting for the long-winded and laboured shing tala’i drebo. I am a practical person. Some foreign loanwords just shouldn’t be Tibetanised, so I call the banana banana.

Garnished with the right accessories, the Precious Banana Garland makes also for a great kid’s birthday party cake or a small present for tea-party. Or try to bake the Rinchen Banana Trengwa with the best ingredients and a pure motivation - with that auspicious name you could then even use it as an offering to your Lama – kyabso chio!

Tsampa Biscuits 

(neo-Tib: Tsampa Biscuits)

Tsampa Biscuits

80 g Tsampa

250 g flour

80 g ground nuts

1 teaspoon of salt

400 g chocolate

220 g soft butter

300 g brown sugar

2 eggs from happy hens

15 g vanilla sugar

Sift flour into a bowl, add salt; crush chocolate. Stir butter in another bowl until creamy; add sugar, eggs and vanilla sugar, mix well; add flour mix and stir into soft batter; add crushed chocolate, stir well; heat oven to 190 degrees Celcius; put baking-paper on baking-plate; make 4 cm big balls out of the dough and place on baking-plate (5  cm gap); bake for 15 minutes.

The first time I baked these cookies they were an instant hit with kids and adults alike. When I revealed there was Tsampa in them everyone was thrilled and surprised that these weren’t regular American-style chocolate chip cookies. Good old Tibetan Tsampa could be turned into something fun and even our men enjoyed the Tsampa Biscuits although Tibetan males usually don’t have a sweet tooth.

In Tibet you get all kinds of roasted barley flour varying from region to region. Use whatever Tsampa you have at your disposition, they all work. As for the chocolate, even the Hershey bars you find in Tibet will do the job. Dark bitter chocolate goes really well with whole-grain Tsampa.

You can be really creative with names for these new dishes. First, I wanted to name them “Rangzen Cookies” but that somehow reminded me of George Bush’s “Freedom Fries” and things like “Liberty Cabbage” so I dropped the name. Also if you are in Tibet, baking Rangzen Cookies could get you into trouble - “guilty of baking illegal cookies” so to speak. I don’t want to cause harm, remember? So I switched to harmless “Tsampa Biscuits” which would also be understandable in Tibet because “biscuit” is an old English loanword. My brother can pronounce it super well with a proper Tibetan accent: Tsampa Betscootring!

Risotto Tibetano 

(neo-Tib: Itali Mingtag)

"Risotto tibetano"

Risotto rice

1 onion

rapeseed oil

vegetable broth

fresh highland mushrooms

salt, pepper, nutmeg
fresh Koriander

Graded Tibetan Cheese (Chuzhig)

Heat oil (any kind is ok but I recommend rapeseed since it’s common in Tibet), fry minced onion; add Risotto rice and stir-fry briefly; add vegetable broth until rice is covered and let simmer at low heat for 20 minutes; keep adding broth as the rice absorbs liquid, don’t let it dry out; wash mushrooms (Chanterelles and Matsutake are typical Tibetan) and brown them a bit in butter, then add to the rice; cook for 5 more minutes; season with salt, pepper and Dzati or nutmeg, also a typical spice; sprinkle graded Tibetan dried cheese over the Risotto and stir well leaving it in there for a few minutes to dissolve;  garnish with some Sonam Penzom (Koriander)  - and finito is your Risotto Tibetano - tataa!

I don’t remember whether you can buy Risotto rice in the big cities in Tibet. If not, just use a locally available short-grain rice, Sushi- or other kinds of sticky rice may work too. I will try it out next time I’m there.

What makes this dish “tibetano” are the local mushrooms, the Koriander, and of course the Chuzhig which substitutes for the graded Parmesan.

The Tibetan name “Itali Mingtag” goes back to my childhood. When my mom served Risotto when we were little, I remember my dad referring to this dish as “Mingtag”. He told us in the old days, they served a Risotto-resembling rice porridge in the monasteries when the monks were admitted to their finals. The candidates were called dgeshes ming-rtags-ba (no guarantee for correct orthography!) aka Geshe nominees from where the rice porridge served during the exams then got its name: Mingtag Thugpa. It was a heavy buttery, sticky, sweet-and-salty affair with raisins, dates, and chunks of meat in it. The dish was also known as Damcha Thugpa when served by the Khangtshens. I only know the dish from hear-say. Rather than Risotto maybe Mingtag resembles a Spanish Paella more or an Indian Pulao or maybe Cajun Jambalaya?

One day, when I’m that old woman with long white hair living in retirement in her little house in a corner of the Tibetan highlands, I would like to bring out a cookbook with wonderful recipes based on locally grown produce: Mountain Pesto (with wild garlic), Tibetan Ravioli with wild asparagus and ricotta filling, Tibetan apple pie, Tibetan peach jam and so and so forth. And I will have a hell of a time finding names for my creations!

Of course these imagined dishes as well as the ones I presented here are only Tibetan out of pure arbitrariness and labelling: I choose to emphasise the Tibetan ingredients over the other components and I try to stress some kind of “mindful eating” Buddhist ethics in food preparation. Kill-joys could easily say: “This is not how Tibetans eat! This is the fancy food of Westernised urban Tibetans!”

Well, some Westernised urban Tibetans consider themselves very kosher Tibetans too – Mountain Phoenix is one of them. I may not look like one and for sure I wash more often, but hey: Folks like me are as typical Tibetan as the archetypical grubby nomad living in a black tent. We come in all shapes and sizes, live scattered all over the globe in all kinds of dwellings, have all kinds of life-styles, eat all kinds of foods, and our heads are full of all kinds of ideas – long live our internal diversity!

And while not all Snowlanders may be equally fond of all dishes alike – Buddha knows I would only eat Pak and drink Bodcha if we were on the verge of a famine - contemporary Tibetan cooking is becoming more varied and richer, offering delicacies for all of us – and as we have seen even for some foreign culinary adventurers like Sandrine.

So let’s go back to our kitchens and invent more new Tibetan recipes!

Bon appétit - nyébo nanggo!

Mountain Phoenix

All written content on this blog is coyprighted. Please do not repost entire essays on your websites without seeking my prior written consent.

A Hairdresser, A Nun, A Humble Little Boy, And A Hunk

I went for a haircut the other day to look my best for the upcoming Tibetan New Year, Losar, which falls on 25 February 2009. Although there are fancier hairdressers around, I always go to Nathalie. She knows how my hair falls and always makes me walk out of that salon feeling like a goddess.

Nathalie’s hair is very long, very blond - bleached of course - but still looking very natural. She has the prettiest face, blue eyes, a sweet smile, all topped off by a warm personality. Going to see her, is almost like going to see a therapist.

So there I sat waiting for her magic to begin, when she asked me: “Have you heard of that Tibetan nun? I went to her concert the other day and was so moved by her singing, I cried all the time!”

She couldn’t remember the name of the singing nun, but obviously meant Ani Choying Dolma, whom I had seen on Youtube performing “Amazing Grace” before a huge crowd. I thought she was extraordinary.

“The funny thing though was that there was only one Tibetan in the audience, apart from him, only Westerners,” Nathalie said.

“We normally associate nuns and monks with chanting prayers in a monastery. Singing is quite something else. I just don’t think a nun singing on a stage is something most Tibetans would go out to see for entertainment,” I told her.

Nathalie, sweetheart, you have no clue who our real stars are!

Tibetans would flock to the concert hall, when an international nobody like Phurbu T. Namgyal is in town. If you want to see a Tibetan crowd, go to his concert, baby!

One of my mom’s friends calls the US-based singer Bhutee Namgyal and declared him to be her favourite singer. That’s funny for two reasons: First, she doesn’t seem to notice that something can’t be right with the way she got her favourite singer’s name, because “Bhutee” is clearly a girl’s name; second, someone her age falling for this type of music would be like my 60-year old neighbour Gerdie saying her favourite band is the Backstreet Boys. You know what I mean? There’s just a huge disconnect here.

Believe it or not, Phurbu T. Namgyal’s popularity reaches all the way into Tibet. When I was in Lhasa in the summer of 2007, they played his song Lhasa’i Barkhor nangla in the Barkhor, day in and out, and reportedly, his song Nga yuk ney (“Leaving me” or literally “Throwing me away”) is melting plenty of hearts all over the place. Oh dear, to tell you the truth, I find that song so pitiful. I am perplexed that even some of our business partners – mature, grown-up folks - are also enamoured with these songs.

Is it just me? Something wrong with my senses?

The guy sounds like a kid with speech impairment. Tune-wise, most songs are so simplistic; don’t they remind you of nursery rhymes? The same goes for most of the lyrics with the same silly lines repeated ad nauseam; doesn’t that make the songs sound as if they were composed for the retarded? Think of Chim Chim Lhamu and the likes. And what does the “T” in his name stand for anyway - Tintin? Twerp?

By far the worst thing though is that he refers to himself in his songs as bhuchung (“little boy”), or worse even bhuchung nyamchung (“humble little boy”). Please, someone tell me: What self-respecting girl would take a second look at a guy like that? All my reflexes say: “Bhutee, go home to your Amala, quick!”

But hey, a big girl like me shouldn’t take him apart like that. Doesn’t make me look good bashing a humble little boy…

My friend Pema from the Tibetan for kids’ story thinks the best Tibetan singer is Yadong. She says his music has depth and character, his voice is expressive and powerful. Even if you don’t get the lyrics because he has a thick eastern Tibetan accent or sings in Chinese, she insists the emotions still run through.

She must know, she’s a sanjor (recent arrival from Tibet) and understands everything the man is singing about.

Another friend, Lhakpa, wanted to get Yadong over for a famous open air concert in her region. I sent her all the CDs and VCDs I had so she could pass them on to the organisers for an impression Yadong’s versatile music. Alas, in the end, they didn’t invite him - they weren’t sure he could move large Western audiences.

Every now and then you hear a rumour that Yadong, the self-proclaimed Khampa hanzi (“hunk from Kham”), got into trouble with the authorities for a politically sensitive song. But he always bounces back, has basically been around forever in this short-lived industry where singers pop in and out everyday and disappear into oblivion shortly thereafter. Not him.

Let’s see what’s next. A recent visitor from Kham told us Yadong just did a film in which he acts and sings. Right now he’s said to struggle with the censors to get it out into the public. Let me tell you one thing, that’s what makes the guy hot in my eyes: That deeply felt bond to Tibet, the art to put that into his music without instrumentalising his work, and the guts to look the occupying force in the eye.

Well Pema, I guess you got me on board as far as Yadong is concerned.

I have a suspicion that even Nathalie may like his music. He also has long hair. That helps. Nathalie has a weakness for men with long hair. I must bring her a CD next time.

Happy Losar!

Mountain Phoenix



All written content on this blog is coyprighted. Please do not repost entire essays on your websites without seeking my prior written consent. 

Blind Brides Or Strawberries From The Northpole?

One of my friends, Dolma, has wanted to get married forever. She’s never made it until today. And just how could she? You see, she’s not even allowed to be seen with her boyfriend in public. You tell me: How could that ever lead to marriage?

Like a slice of ham in a sandwich, she’s stuck between her parents’ wishes (“Tibetans should marry Tibetans”, sound familiar, huh) and her dream partner Daniel („Did you tell them now? Or else I will“!). So their relationship has languished in hiding for the longest time. The desperate hope being that some sort of force majeure will make everything alright.

Her mother and father are using age-old proven Asian parental tricks. Like causing the kid a bad conscience: “After all the things we’ve done for you… (blah, blah)”. Or they ignore her by not talking to her for days, or threaten directly: “If you marry a foreigner, you must leave this place. You must never bring him to any Tibetan gathering, you can forget about us, we will cut off all contact with you.” Or the all-time favourite : “If you marry a foreigner, you are no longer our daughter!”

Poor Dolma, falls completely for it. Wants to do everything right. At the same time, she doesn’t want to lose Daniel. Poor Daniel too. He’s been putting up with this for so long. Still harbors no ill-feeling against her parents. But just for how much longer will he be able to pull himself together?

„Dolma“, I told her the other day, „when I look at you, I remember an old Tibetan saying: Lungpa sharko, nama sharko“ - „blind country, blind brides“. Where on earth should you present a Tibetan partner to your parents if you live in a foreign country? Aren’t our parents like people who look for strawberries in the northpole? There’s just no such thing, Good Lord!” A tired smile went over my friend’s face. It was easy for me to talk big. A part of her was like remote-controlled by the parents who, if we look close, are pretty selfish with their good intentions.

“Look,” I started again, “even if you found a Tibetan partner in this country, your parents’ wishes are insatiable.” As soon as the top condition is met, they’ll start with the fine-tuning. Like regional affialiation: “Where in Tibet exactly did you say his parents are from?” Or religious orientation: ‘Are they red hats, yellow hats, Bonpo, Kagyud, Sakya? - Holy Trinity, we hope he’s not one of those deamon-worshippers???”

Then we touched on the most important point: Compatibility. Something, she noticed with shock, her parents had never addressed. Amala-tso, Pala-tso! If “Tibetan” were the only criteria, we could all throw ourselves at the next best Tib and it would work. Fully compatible. Zero personality required, no common interests necessary. Suffice it to belong to the same race. How bad can it get? Makes you get the creeps too?

In any event, Tibetans outside are obsessed with the thought that Tibetan culture is doomed. No clue if Dolma’s parents are so fixed on a Tibetan partner to support the perishing Tibetan culture? Or maybe they are racist? Hey, please don’t laugh. It could be. Think: How would Dolma feel, if Daniel’s parents wouldn’t approve of her because she is a foreigner and they only like their own kind as an in-law? Smacks of racism doesn’t it?

But I think it’s fear. Pure and simple. Fear of Western influence, fear of Chinese influence, fear of Indian influence, fear even of non-mainstream Tibetan influence. A mentality where you have lost before you even started. Why not embrace the foreigner as one more “convert”, one more potential carrier of Tibetan culture, one more enabler of cultural exchange? Why be so uptight?

I don’t believe our culture is doomed. I believe Tibetan culture is strong and evolving, absorbing things from other cultures. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s normal. And, oh I forgot, Dolma moved in with Daniel the other day. The next step is marriage. Her parents will get over it. No alternative. - And I believe in love marriage.

Mountain Phoenix




All written content on this blog is coyprighted. Please do not repost entire essays on your websites without seeking my prior written consent. 

7 Steps To Make The Tibetan Beauty Pageant More Successful

Every year the same drama. You bet it'll be the same in 2008: Huge effort just to get a handful of candidates together; another huge effort to get the winner listed in some international pageant; culmination: China spoils the broth, Miss Tibet withdraws refusing to run as Miss China-Tibet. Heartfelt Tashi Deleg to the winner? What a joke!

Dear fellow Tibetans, Shoenu-nam, I gave this some serious thought. I think the Miss Tibet pageant can be an enrichment for our culture. This is what I would to improve it if I were in Lobsang Wangyal’s shoes:

Step 1: Make the prize relevantRight now, the pageant is geared towards participants from India and Nepal. One what? Luck? Lakh? What’s that? How much? Rupees? Jowo Rombo (I really mean Jowo Rombo, not John Rambo), winners of beauty pageants in other countries receive modeling contracts, prizes that serve as a door-opener, something constructive the women can instrumentalise to get ahead in life and in the way they want. But just a bunch of something not even convertible into hard currency? Improve on the appeal of the prize, make it relevant.

Step 2: Drop the “Green Book” requirementAny person who is Tibetan by ethnicity and fulfils the requirements of a pageant should be able to participate. The Green Book requirement may seem like the politically correct thing to do. Fact is however, that many Tibetans abroad are foreign citizens and, for whatever reason, do not pay. If you want to increase participation in the pageant, drop this requirement. It’s obsolete. - Isn’t the pageant a private-sector undertaking, Lobsang-la? Applying for the pageant is not like applying for a post in the Dharamsala administration, right? So consider dropping it. Let’s not make this more bureaucratic than necessary.

Step 3: Move itConsider a more cosmopolitan venue for the pageant than Dharamsala. It’s like holding a beauty pageant in the Vatican. Where is the audience apart from a couple of "Sister Act" type monks and nuns? The conservatives are upset already claiming Miss Tibet “is not Tibetan culture”, why add oil to the fire by holding it right under their nose? Move it to a neutral place where you also have a decent audience.

Step 4: Be specific
“Miss Tibet” is misleading as the event is geared towards Tibetan women living abroad in India and Nepal. Specify. Make it “Miss Tibet Abroad” or “Miss Overseas Tibet” or “Miss Tibet India” or whatever. You understand where I’m coming from. This is not only common practice as in the example “Miss Taiwan USA”, it is also more accurate. Plus our candidate is less likely to irritate China in international beauty competitions.

Step 5: Exploit the potential
Something as glamorous as a beauty pageant would be so easy to market! The website and the entire promotion of this event could be so much more improved. If the organisers don’t have the know-how in-house, they should get professional marketing help from externals. Influence reputation, increase participation. Make the most out of it. Be creative!

Step 6: Stop mixing politics
All Miss Tibet give the same robot-like answer when asked what she would like to achieve during her year: “I – reba – really – reba – want to help create - reba – awareness about the Tibetan cause, reba”. - Good grief! As if we needed them to reconfirm all clichés about the intellectual capacity of women who participate in beauty pageants. Lobsang-la, why hasn’t anybody told these ladies that if all they want is spreading awareness about Tibet, they should join an NGO? Kuncho sum!

A beauty pageant is just that, a beauty pageant, all over the world, operated based on criteria specific to that industry. Stop using it as a platform to spread a political agenda for goodness sake. It’s shooting yourself in the foot. The winner has had enormous difficulty to participate in subsequent international competitions. Who can blame China when they claim “Miss Tibet” to be a political thing? It is! You allowed it to become that! If you want to be professional and if the winner of the pageant should be able to compete internationally, stop the political overtones.

Step 7: Be bold
And if China still has the face to ask our candidate to run as “Miss Tibet China” so be it. If I were Miss Tibet, I would go for it. I would look at it not as treason but as an act of pragmatism and courage. The Tibetans know my heart is in the right place (left that is). The Chinese will come to like me because I accept them. I will be in the unique position to look after my individual goals without ever compromising my commitment to my people. Of course I would also rather wear a tag that says “Miss Tibet” only. But sometimes you have to be flexible. For a patriot, it takes more guts to wear “Miss China Tibet” than to quit. That’s the way I see it. But then I would’nt qualify in the first place. Akha!

Mountain Phoenix




All written content on this blog is coyprighted. Please do not repost entire essays on your websites without seeking my prior written consent.