Yen Kangsoi
There are recipes where flavour begins with oil and a crowded spice box. Yen Kangsoi manages perfectly well without either.
Kangsoi is a brothy, everyday preparation from Manipur’s Meitei kitchens, built around vegetables simmered in water with ginger, chilli and ngari, the deeply funky fermented fish that does an extraordinary amount of heavy lifting. Add yen, or chicken, and the broth becomes richer while still remaining remarkably light.
This version uses country chicken, mustard greens, potato and fresh ginger flowers, which are treated almost like a vegetable rather than simply an aromatic. A whole bhut jolokia quietly infuses the pot and can be broken open at the end if you feel the afternoon has been going suspiciously well.
No oil. No powdered masala. Just chicken, greens, fermentation and one chilli with an extremely well-documented attitude problem.
Smoked Pork with Colocasia and Axone
Some recipes build flavour with a dozen spices. This one lets fermentation and smoke handle the paperwork. Smoked pork is simmered with axone, the gloriously funky fermented soybean so closely associated with Naga cooking, along with colocasia, tomatoes and enough raja mircha to make its presence known. The colocasia eventually gets mashed back into the pot, thickening the broth while soaking up all that pork fat and fermented goodness. No elaborate masala, no heroic bhunao, not even ginger and garlic. When your ingredients have this much personality, sometimes the smartest cooking technique is simply knowing when to get out of their way.
Smoked Pork with Anishi and Mustard Greens
This is one of those dishes where fermentation, smoking and chillies do most of the heavy lifting. Anishi, made from fermented and dried colocasia leaves, brings an earthy, slightly funky depth to the broth, while smoked pork contributes the fat and that wonderfully campfire-like savouriness. Add mustard greens for a little bitterness and roasted Sichuan pepper for its citrusy, numbing kick, and you have a dish that is less about a complicated masala and more about a handful of ingredients being very good at their jobs. It is an Ao Naga preparation, traditionally eaten with hot rice and simple boiled vegetables. Simple on paper, rather spectacular in the bowl.
Ombhl
Ombhl is a lovely little lesson in balancing flavours. Soft, almost jammy pumpkin gets cooked with tamarind until it turns deeply sour, then jaggery comes in to round out the edges, while mustard seeds, dried chilli and bay leaf bring a little savoury warmth. It's sweet, sour, spicy and earthy all at once, and somehow manages to make pumpkin considerably more exciting than pumpkin has any right to be.
Pork with Perilla Seeds and Fermented Bamboo Shoots
Pork with perilla seeds is another Naga pork specialty. In the Ao Naga dialect, the dish is called Ak Shi Azü Den Asoba Aon, which translates roughly to pork cooked with perilla seeds. Ak Shi means pork meat and Azü means perilla seeds.
It is a wonderfully straightforward dish built around a few big flavours: fatty pork, the nutty aroma of roasted perilla seeds, the sourness of fermented bamboo shoot, and the citrusy bite of Sichuan pepper. There isn't much going on here, which is precisely the point.