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.
Goan Pork Sorpotel
Sorpotel is basically the “no part of the pig gets left behind” kind of dish. It happily welcomes fatty pork, head meat, liver, and whatever other mysterious bits are hanging around, then simmers them all down with dried chillies, spices, and a very enthusiastic splash of vinegar. The result? A bold, tangy, spicy, deeply savoury party in a pot, where the vinegar somehow keeps everything from getting too wild (it tries its best, anyway). And here’s the real magic trick: sorpotel doesn’t just sit there, it improves with age. Today’s batch is delicious. Tomorrow it’s even better. By day three, it’s basically showing off.
Dan Dan Noodles
Dan Dan Noodles are a small bowl with a slightly unreasonable amount going on. There is spicy chilli oil, numbing Sichuan pepper, fermented greens, savoury pork and a rich sesame sauce, all fighting for attention in the best possible way. Traditionally, the noodles arrive beautifully layered and completely unmixed. That part is your problem. Get your chopsticks in there and mix everything until every strand is coated, then try to work out which flavour hit you first.
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.