Tripura is 3rd smallest state in India, bordered to the north, west, and south by Bangladesh, to the east by the state of Mizoram, and to the northeast by the state of Assam. It is located in an isolated hilly region of the country, with various indigenous people or tribes, making up most portion of population.
There are many states of India which are not much explored, Tripura being one of them, it is a state full of unimaginable surprises. The food of Tripura is known as "Tripuri Cuisine" is one of the finest ones in India, it is a representation of various cultures and local ingredients. But as the state is not very well known the Cuisine is an underdog, unfortunately somewhere the essence of this is getting lost.
Ingredients and Cooking Methods of Tripura
The cooking methods are quite easy, healthy and of course delicious. There's not much use of oil or masalas that the world is familiar with when it comes to Indian food. Use of simple locally available ingredients that is easily available is the key.
Talking about Tripuri cuisine, the one ingredient that plays a big role in multiple dishes is 'Berma' i.e 'fermented fish'. It's known to have a pungent smell but it's the element that brings a great depth of flavour in our food and tripuri cuisine is incomplete without it.
As someone hailing from Tripura, my day would start with delicious aroma of Berma and Basil leaves that pulls me straight to the kitchen to see what mom is cooking even when I know what it would be. She would prepare 'berma bwtwi'; (berma means fermented fish) and (bwtwi means soup). The dish is a simple preparation that includes boiled Vegetables with Berma, it holds a soupy consistency. In most household Berma Bwtwi is paired with steamed rice. Its a simple easy to cook yet very healthy preparation.
Most of our food is boiled, cooked with rice powder and fermented or dry fish. Oil is used in frying and cooking meat based dishes and my favorite is both chicken and pork curry. Out of all the meat based dishes, I have a special bond with 'Tohan pengjak', boiled chicken dish that brings back so many memories of my childhood. Whenever I'd fall sick, mom would cook me this, she'd make it spicy and add ginger as that'll help clearing my throat and the spiciness would open my blocked nose.
Earlier, our tribe used bamboo to cook food. We shove all the ingredients inside the bamboo and let it cook on coal or fire, covering the hole with banana leaf. My grandmother would say that the flavor of the food would be so different and best, no utensils can match that level of deliciousness. I had the honor of tasting it just this year and I must say, it's damn worth all the hard work. Sitting in front of the hot coal waiting for the food to be cooked and then enjoying it in a banana leaf.
Jampui Kamola: Oranges of Tripura
Jampui Kamola are small-sized juicy oranges with tantalising sweetness, they have earned a name over decades. Back in the 1960s, tribal villagers in Jampui Hills — mostly inhabited by Reang and Lushai (Mizo) communities, produced oranges purely for domestic consumption. With increasing export, ‘Kamola’ became a significant cash crop in the area and huge land masses were covered by this crop.
Jhum Cultivation
A lot of ingredients that we use are organic, the vegetables or fruits are products of Jhum cultivation which still exists but a lot lesser than before. The vegetables grown this way is free from any kind of pesticides or Chemicals that's used for doubling the yield. A lot of the ingredients that we use are not found outside of North East, these are native to our area so it's quite a task to explain what vegetables we eat since I have no idea what they're called in English and haven't seen them being used anywhere outside NE. Bamboos also play a big role in our lifestyle. Our practices have all been forgotten with the new technologies that this modern world offers.
Now, since I've mentioned about Jhum in the above para, I'll give a little more information about it. The area of the Jhum cultivation is known as 'huk/hug' in our language. The women and men of our tribe would go to work with zeal. They also build a temporary house called 'gairing nok' with bamboos, a place where they'll take rest after work, or sometimes cook and enjoy their lunch with their friends and resume work. And when the harvest time would come, they would go with their long baskets on their back to collect it all.
I never experienced any of these, it's all what my grandma and mom told me, that's how their life used to be many years ago.
They would hunt for edible snails in the river or sometimes in crops (wet field), crabs, mussels and lot more. It was so easy to catch them, just a reach away. Such were times, when life was about enjoying what you have and not be greedy haha!
Our cooking process is different but so simple. Just boil vegetables with rice powder or without it and add fermented fish, mash it or don't and enjoy it with our rice or maybe sticky rice. We Tripuris eat sticky rice in a special way and it's called 'bangwi'. Bangwi is nothing but sticky rice wrapped with lairu(a kind of leaf) in a cone shape and then steamed or boiled. Then we unwrap it and we have a cone shape sticky rice paired with any kind of curry. We add ginger, salt, peanuts, carrots in the rice to make it more flavorful. There's so much to say about our cuisine and I can go on and on but i decide to stop here and stop boring you all. It's always a pleasure to talk about my culture and cuisine and let people know that Indian cuisine is diverse.
Alright, it's time to say goodbye for now, I will come up with more stories, recipes and tales from Tripura. Until next time, Sayonara!
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