From the heart of the lush greens of Meghalaya, come sisters Daphimanroi and Dakiwanri Warjri who have been cooking for the community and taking Khasi cuisine to the people. Not only do they cook for people in their hometown, but their travelling pop-up experience Symbai has been well–received in several States like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Puducherry, and more. We speak to the sisters about Khasi cuisine, breaking stereotypes, and more.
Flavour, texture, and ingredient-wise, what comprises Khasi cuisine?
Daphimanroi: Simple. Ingredient forward. Uncomplicated! We use a lot of seasonal and local ingredients. Rice is our staple. The cuisine is definitely a meat heavy one, but having said that we also have a wide variety of vegetarian food. We eat a lot of salads which sometimes comprise wild herbs that are foraged.
Dakiwanri: Khasi cuisine is very clean and simple. We do not use flavour-enhancing or altering spices. In terms of flavour, it’s very true to an ingredient. For texture, it's mostly soft food because we eat a lot of rice, soups, meat curries, pickles, and chutneys. Ingredient wise we have unique ones that are indigenous to our region like Perilla Seeds, black sesame, pepper and turmeric.
What made you pursue cooking?
Daphimanroi: Very honestly, it happened by chance. We both love food (cooking and eating). It so happened that we cooked Khasi food for a small group of friends who were blown away by it and encouraged us to share it with people outside of our home.
Dakiwanri: I started cooking with the encouragement of a chef friend of mine during the lockdown and did my first pop-up in 2022.
Any tips that you have taken from your family's culinary secrets
Daphimanroi: Every family has their own little secrets on how to cook their traditional food. We too, have picked up some tips from our grandmom, mom, dad, aunts and uncles; even from our house help who happens to be an amazing cook.
Dakiwanri: Every household makes items in a different way, maybe it’s in the amount of ingredients that you add or a cooking method.
You host several pop-ups around the country familiarising Khasi cuisine with the people. How do people respond to that?
Daphimanroi: We have actually been very pleasantly surprised by how well people have taken to Khasi food. Every pop-up has been very successful with everyone having only good things to say about the food.
Dakiwanri: We shed light on the Khasi cuisine. It really helps highlight a particular culture and educate people about it. There’s a stereotype that our cuisine is spicy or we eat a lot of chillies but Khasi cuisine is the opposite because we don’t cook with chillies and the heat comes from pickles and chutneys. The flavours are new, and many people have never tried them before.
Have you tasted what is served as North Eastern cuisine in other parts of India? How similar or different are they to the actual cuisine?
Dakiwanri: Speaking of Naga cuisine, I have eaten quite a bit of it. I think there is good representation for Naga cuisine outside the Northeast because there are many Naga chefs.
How do you incorporate local produce into your dishes?
Daphimanroi: The most loved dish is definitely the smoked pork which is something we source from back home for all our pop-ups. Other ingredients are black sesame seeds, perilla seed, black pepper, Khasi red rice, and Lakadong turmeric (which is now famous for its nutritional value and having the highest curcumin content in the world).
Dakiwanri: There are not too many indigenous ingredients to incorporate because a lot of our vegetables come from West Bengal and other regions. One thing that we make is a White pumpkin with black sesame paste curry.
Do you like to experiment with the cuisine or keep it authentic?
Daphimanroi: We try as much as we can to keep everything as traditional and authentic as possible. To make our menu a course meal we've just added a few tweaks like serving stews as soups. We add a salad too while trying as best we can to stick to flavours close to home. We're not a dessert/sweet eating community but at our events, we serve desserts which are our interpretation of how we eat some tea-time snacks back home.
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What is your roadmap for 2024?
Daphimanroi: Having received positive feedback from so many of our events, it has definitely been encouraging for us to think of ways to take this forward. We surely want to spread Khasi food throughout the country and maybe even abroad (keeping our fingers crossed).
Dakiwanri: We have one pop-up coming up in Chennai at ITC Chola in July. It’s a new city for us.