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The sight of steamed packages of pulverized corn, tightly bound in their husks, often misleads the Nepalese in their path. At the restaurant Raithaane’s stall in a farmers market, south of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, the dish has been served since hariyo makkai (sweet corn) has entered the season. Served on the side relentless, a catch-all term for ferments and pickles, the dish originates from eastern Nepal, and not, as many locals would assume, from Central America. They are not tamales, they are langkucha.
The ancient city of Patan has a spider web of alleys lined with intricate earthen buildings and temples. At the end of an alley, a lonely blackboard indicates Raithaane, sheltered in a courtyard. It serves traditional dishes unrecognizable to many Nepalese city dwellers. There are batuk, black lentil fritters from the Magar and Khas communities of the southwest; rikkikur, potato pancakes with fermented buttermilk and yak butter from the Himalayan communities; and arikanchan, lentil paste windmills rolled with taro leaves, originating from communities along the border with India.
Raithaane co-owner Prashanata Khanal wants to remedy the ignorance. For the past decade, the environmental consultant has researched Nepalese cuisine for his blog, The Gundruk. Then came the restaurant. More recently, he put the finishing touches to his book, Timmur: Stories and flavors of Nepal, release scheduled for December. Focusing on the culinary histories of 12 communities, Khanal aims to provide insight into the nuances and diversity of Nepalese cultural gastronomy when foreign foods quickly take over. He wants Nepal to value its own food, as well as its unique ingredients and food system. “Nepalese know more about other cuisines than Nepalese cuisine,†Khanal explains. “That’s what keeps me going.”
Nepal’s 30 million people belong to 125 distinct ethnicities and speak almost as many languages. A majority follow Hinduism, some follow Buddhism, while others follow a combination of the two; various indigenous communities have their own belief systems. Each religion has its own edicts, each community its own standards, traditions and available ingredients. Once organized by a caste system, Nepalese society was codified by a so-called purity compared to the reigning Hindu religion – what people ate and drank was an integral part of their place in society.
“Food is a socio-political problem. It has divided our communities, â€says Khanal. “We often romanticize that food connects us, but that isn’t always the case.” He begins to list the things that once divided Nepalese communities according to purity, under the dominant Hindu religion: buffalo meat, pork, various grains, alcohol, water. His education is full of examples.
“In my father’s family, it’s a kind of sin to eat buffalo meat, pork, drink alcohol,†says Khanal. “But in my mother’s culture, buffalo meat is an integral part of the culture. They offer it to the gods. Even alcohol is offered to the guests, offered to the Gods.
Khanal grew up outside the dusty urban sprawl of Kathmandu. His childhood home was in one of 15 brick buildings in Bhimad, central Nepal, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen hills and bordered by the glacial Gandaki and temperate Jyagdi rivers. After school, Khanal would explore the jungle, swim and fish in the Jyagdi. He would feed coils of niguro, crispy coiled ferns, roasting chestnuts and wildflowers relentless; he looked after the garden, harvesting tomatoes, tubers, squash and squash. “From an early age, I was really fascinated to see plants, crops, to see them grow,†he says. The family had their own buffalo for milk, but rarely ate meat.
Khanal had responsibilities as the eldest of three. His parents were teachers, geographically separated by their assignments in different villages, so the children lived with their mother in Bhimad. And while paternal grandparents often live with their children’s families, Khanal’s grandparents chased his parents out: Khanal’s mother Newar was considered to be of a lower caste than her Brahmin in-laws. His grandmother refused to visit him. So Khanal learned to cook out of necessity. He prepared food when his pious Hindu mother couldn’t, such as when she followed the Hindu maxim that menstruating women were not allowed in the kitchen. “He had to mind his own business and be responsible because he was older,†says his sister Binita. “From there I think he got down to cooking. Khanal would recreate moms memories of rare visits to the restaurant, as well as lentils of the day, stewed vegetables tarkaris, and sticky mounds of dhindo, made with local millet.
Most restaurants in Kathmandu now have some form of moms Where dal bhat On the menu. These are almost ubiquitous dishes in Nepal, often the first to be mentioned when talking about Nepalese cuisine. Dal bhat, a dish made from lentil and rice soup, and served with several toppings, is an everyday dish for Nepalese, but often the only descriptor of the country’s cuisine by locals and foreigners. “I think it’s a bit unfair to define Nepalese cuisine by a handful of cuisines,†Khanal says, as his pressure cooker whistles in the background. He cooks black lentils to accompany his dal bhat having dinner. But he doesn’t serve him in Raithaane, he wants the Nepalese to try something they might not recognize.
Khanal takes charge of conservation and cooking in Raithaane, scrupulously teaching his chef Barish Gahatraj how to cook relatively unfamiliar dishes. Gahatraj grew up cooking like Khanal, but takes pride in cooking dishes that many other young chefs don’t recognize, though at times his boss is a bit of a perfectionist. Some dishes turned out to be cult little hits, like the juju dhau tart, a tart of strained buffalo milk yogurt with a roasted buckwheat crust (called tsampa, a traditional staple food in mountain communities). The popularity of other dishes highlights the declining food stratification of the caste system: the only meats served are dried buffalo and darani kalo bungur, pork raised in eastern Nepal, both popular but historically unclean.
One of Khanals partner restaurants, Mathilde Lefebvre, a French agricultural researcher based in Nepal, introduced French dishes, such as a galette made from tsampa, yak cheese and local greens, although Khanal mainly preoccupies Nepalese dishes. He takes great care in conservation, keen to ensure that Raithaane does justice to the cultures she represents and ensures that her food is entirely local. As an environmentalist, he believes the future of Nepal’s food system must be sustainable. “He doesn’t like to compromise,†says Lefebvre.
Raithaane’s founding ethic is not only focused on culture. Khanal, Lefebvre and tourism entrepreneur Jason Shah, another partner, want to strengthen Nepal’s food system. They only serve pork and cured buffalo meat, as they are not sure about the quality of other meats. They source honey from a single beekeeper, roasted mustard oil from small mills, organic ingredients from small farmers, and specialty ingredients directly from communities across the country through a traveling network of friends and of families.
Nepal has become dependent on imported food, while its agricultural diversity has suffered as farmers try to compete with garlic and apples from China, soybean oils from South America, and onions and rice from India. , often at a lower cost. “That’s why we are losing all these traditional grains,†Khanal says. Kaguno, the foxtail millet he used to cook as a child, is now more difficult to find. It is on their menu in the hope that demand can secure the future of the grain.
Khanal has also been involved in a local program to increase the discourse on food systems, called NEPAL FOOD, intended to be built around an annual summit that brings together the hospitality and agriculture industries. It is led by Tulsi Giri, a social entrepreneur met by Khanal while protesting against Monsanto’s entry into Nepal in 2011. And, as the pandemic has made everything virtual, the conversation intensifies: 35 to 40 professionals of the food industry per session. “We were able to discuss things that had never been discussed publicly,†says Khanal. Concerns often revolve around foreign investment, corporate interests and the power of small farmers, coupled with the role of the wider food industry in securing a prosperous future in Nepal.
Giri considers Raithaane’s longevity to be paramount, because if the restaurant doesn’t succeed, people won’t follow. The partners never imagined “getting rich with Raithaane”, says Khanal. On the contrary, they wanted to bring about change. ” It was the goal. We wanted other restaurants to be inspired by us, â€he says. It’s not just about restaurants, it’s about Nepal and its relationship to its food.
Shortly after Raithaane started serving langkucha at the farmer’s market, Khanal began receiving messages and photos from customers who had attempted to steam their own packages of corn at home. “Just yesterday, or the day before yesterday, one of my friend’s sisters also asked me for the recipe,†he says. “This is what keeps me going: people are discovering Nepalese cuisine and appreciating its diversity. “
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