A Tibetan Recipe Called ‘Juema’ (Blood Sausage)

Chetang Goiche: Make dough and flatten it with a rolling pin. Cut it into strips and fry it with rapeseed oil. Then take it out and mix it with some melted brown sugar.

Cheser Mog: Cook rice in a rice cooker until it is well done, then cook it further with a pressure cooker. Mix it with some melted butter, brown sugar, sugar, raisins and salt.

Zhoima Mogu. Cook wild 'ginseng' until it is well done, and flavor it with some melted butter and sugar.

Yuria: Grind the Tibetan-produced wheat into flour, cook it into pasty state, and then add some butter to it Noticeably, the Tibet-produced wheat tastes delicate and is nutritious. This is a favorite recipe among people in Nyainrong County.

Zhoixo: Cook wild 'ginseng' until it is well down and then mix it with some yogurt.

A Tibetan Recipe Called Masan

Chexo: Cook rice until it is well down and then mix it with some yogurt.

Gyatog: i.e. Han Style. noodles. Mix some eggs in flour, flatten and cut it into noodles, and then cook it with bone soup.

Gyaho: i.e. Han Style Chafing Dish or "hot pot" In the same way practiced in China's hinterland, people sit around a firepot, while eating and while cooking. The main ingredients are f vermicelli, sea tangle, mushrooms, meat balls, bamboo sprouts, salt and msg, etc. ft is said to be a special course for senior monks during some grand ceremonies.

Xabbatog: Mix meat paste with some shredded turnips and dry curd cheese, and stuff it into rolled dough, and cook it with bone soup.

Gong'a Momo: Mix eggs with flour into dough, roll it, stuff meat paste into it, and then steam or it.

Xab Momo: i.e. stuffed bun. The main gradient is beef or mutton stuffed into dough and baked or steamed.

Xab Pagri: i.e. the patty Stuff the meat paste into rolled dough, flatten and bake it.

Gundain: i.e. Barley Beer Pastry. Cook the cleaned Highland Barley grain, mix it with yeast, seal it in a pottery jar and ferment it into a light barley beer. Mix the beer with brown sugar, wild "ginseng", dry cubic curd cheese and tsampa, making a pastry, and then cook it for about 1 hour over a low fire. This is the first course on New Year's Day for the Tibetan people, just as the "Yuan Xiao" is for the Han people.

Qoiri: Stew fresh mutton chops with flour, chilly, salt and mashed dry curd cheese in cold drinkable water above a slow fire for about 2 hours. Then mix it with shredded wheat and flaked barley, and cook it further with slow fire. The Moinba people in Southwestern Tibet cook it in a different way, e.g. they usually add some stinky dry cheese, mushroom and wild jelly fungi, etc.

Due to the special ecological and cultural environment, the distinctive Tibetan cuisine derived there from has the following characteristics

(l). It is heavily influenced by China's hinterland, India and Nepal. Some of them are completely introduced from the Han area. That can be seen from their names, such as "Gyaho" meaning Han style chafing dish, and Gyatog meaning Han style noodle. Even the most luxurious Tibetan feast is called 'Gyaso Liugyoie meaning l8 Han Style courses. Besides, some are simply named after the Han language pronunciation of the dish.

(2)The traditional Tibetan cuisine gives priority to stewing, followed by seasoning, steaming or simply eating raw. Stir-frying is rarely practiced due to the high altitude environment that hinders the cooking of the food from being well-done. Its main ingredients are native produce, such as highland barley, beef and mutton, viscera, butter, dry cheese and so on. Seasonal vegetables are seldom used. In recent years, however with the popularization of vegetable planting on the highland, the greenstuffs have been served on the table, and with the improvement of cooking wares, stir-fried dishes have also been more and more accepted.

(3) The dietary habit varies from place to place. For example, the people in pastoral areas take much more meat than tsampa, while the people in rural areas are quite the contrary. Another example is that the herders in Northern Tibet do not like to add curry powder to food, while the people of border areas could not live without it. The third example is the varied additives to a overall popular gruel, the Qoiri, e.g. the Moinba people like to add stinky cheese in it while the others do not.

(4) The center of the Tibetan cuisine is Lhasa and Xigaze. Before the peaceful liberation in 195l, almost all Kuchenmeisters were concentrated in the manors of aristocrats, office buildings of bureaucrats and residences of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama in Lhasa and Xigaze, especially in Lhasa, the cuisine of which has become representative of the Tibetan food culture.

Editor:Du Xiaodan