Cooking & Gastronomy
As a chef who recently visited the town of Kalimpong and Darjeeling said ‘There’s never a bad meal in the hills! Everything tastes so fresh and hyperlocal!”
While the goal of this Chefs Retreat is for fellow chefs to meet and mingle, learn about local fermentation, the mountain ingredients and how locals cook with them, the highlight will also be the thoughtfully curated meals.
At the Glenburn TE, the chefs bake their own breads, cakes and cookies. Guests have even been known to barter recipes with the chefs!! They also have resident cows who supply the milk used to make yoghurt, paneer, etc.
While all the meals will be special, some that require a mention are:
The meal after the fermentation class by chef/restaurateur Ishita Rai in Kalimpong, which will have all the ingredients from the class, like kinema (fermented soybeans), gundruk (fermented & dried mustard leaves), churpi (local cheese), pickled tender babooshoot and dalley (local spicy chilli).
The tea-themed meal that will include cooking with fresh, pickled and smoked tea leaves!
The hyper-local meal with some foraged ingredients like the stinging nettle, fiddlehead fern, perilla seeds, etc
The campsite barbeque beside a roaring river
The Nepali meal up in the orchard, cooked by a Nepali family on ‘chulhas’ or clay stoves
In the town of Kalimpong, where a quiet food revolution has been taking place championing terroir, local produce, foraging and artisanal processes like fermentation and cheese making , here’s a great read on WHERE CHEFS EAT by local restaurateur Ishita Rai who will be with us during the tour.
Another highlight in Kalimpong is the early morning visit to the local weekend market where farmers and food producers from neighbouring villages gather to sell their produce. These are people who are passionate about growing and selling healthy and seasonal food, and they are always happy to talk about their products, from organic vegetables, ghee, churpi (cheese), honey, fermented pastes, dalle chillies, dairy, animal products. And it’s a feast as well - there are stalls selling freshly cooked momos, thukpa, taipo, laphing, phambi, soups and other Tibetan, Nepalese and hill dishes.
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