FOREST FLAVOURS

Red ant chutney, you said? You need to consume more than cliches...indigenous foods are a full-bodied celebration of terroir, linking taste to a sense of place and identity

- SOITY BANERJEE

If it’s going to swim upstream, it will happen quickly,” texted Mr F, who also called “it” a “bravery item”. He should know. He met those breathtaking, blustery hills long before Salman Khan and his tribe Mechuka’d their way up to the Lost Frontiers of Arunachal Pradesh. The “it” in question was no upstart carp with Olympic ambitions, but a light, bright, raw fish soup that sometimes carpe-diemed through unsuspecting mainland gullets. Except, it was too late. I was in Namsai and nose-deep in a bowl of brilliance, slurping my way through pasa, a Tai Khampti delicacy that has since become a cold favourite.

The point is, even the best of us, who have—intentionally or accidentally—discovered the joys of eating at indigenous kitchens around the country sometimes find ourselves at the crossroads of a taste test. It doesn’t matter if pig’s trotters or snails, fresh buckwheat leaves or camel milk have been consumed with great relish before. At the pearly gates of new culinary discovery, we may pause, if only for a fleeting second, before crossing over to the ‘Other Side’. But foot-dragging and culinary blindness are not the same dish.