North East meal = pork + rice

Nothing could be further than the truth.

Don’t get me wrong, there is meat in every meal. At least what I saw in a short trip to Meghalaya. But it is not in the quantity we have come to expect in a restaurant. For you mainland folks, a good reference point would be perhaps double the quantity of pickle you take from the jar. The rest of it is steamed rice, boiled vegetables, greens and daal. And the roadside dhabas serve all of it in a small plate, the size of a side plate in a city restaurant.

I was reminded of it recently, realising this is what Alan Goldhammer and John McDougall want you to eat if you want to lose weight.

Here’s a quick thaali you can make in about an hour at home.

1. Steam or boil rice. 

2. Make masoor dal (very thin and no tadka, unless you can make it without oil) with salt, turmeric, garlic and asafoetida. 

3. Prepare a cross between oying (Meghalaya; has cabbage, green beans, potato and mustard greens) and bai (Mizoram; made with green beans and cauliflower stalks):

    Boil a litre of water, drop a tsp of cooking soda when it comes to a rolling boil.

    When the foaming subsides, add a cut potato, some torn cabbage, and if you have, small, sliced pieces of bamboo shoot and a few torn-into-two stalks of cauliflower.

    After 5 minutes, add whole green beans (ends torn off), mustard greens or cauliflower leaves, salt and sliced chilly.

    Once cooked (you will be able to see it or then keep biting into vegetables), take off the fire and add in 1/2 tsp chopped ginger.

    Do not cover with a lid at ANY stage. The green colour fades into an unappetising grey-green.

4. Make a quick tomato chutney, roasting tomatoes, bhut jholokia and garlic over fire (use one of those hole-y flat contraptions you can place on gas fire) and blitzing (or squishing) them with salt and lime juice.

Quick notes:

Want to impress someone? When you use cauliflower next, retain the stalks and the leaves in the freezer to use in the oying-bai.

And I see you have noticed the word “torn” being tossed around. A YouTube video by a local says the food tastes different/authentic when you don’t use a knife. I of course say, “Yay, even less work!”

It tastes best when had hot and in not-too-hot weather. So it tastes great practically 75% of the year in Bangalore.