Cooking and eating in a Martam kitchen

A Martam kitchen is usually warm and busy, with a wood or gas stove, pots of rice and dal, and greens from the garden. Hosts are often happy for guests to help: washing vegetables, rolling momos when they are on the menu, or stirring a curry. Ask questions about where each ingredient comes from; most of it will have been grown a few steps away.

Look out for dishes made with fermented foods that are part of Sikkimese home cooking: gundruk, fermented and dried leafy greens, often cooked into a sour soup; sinki, fermented radish; and soft or hard churpi, a cheese made from cow or yak milk. Pickles of chilli, bamboo shoot or radish come in jars made by the family.

This is a family meal, not a cookery class with a script, so let it unfold naturally. Vegetarian meals are easy. If you are staying in Gangtok, we can sometimes arrange a lunch visit with a family we know, paid directly to the hosts, as part of the Rumtek–Martam walk.