This is the next part of my Food Fusion post. You can read the previous part here - Food Fusion Part I. For those who came in late, Food Fusion is a series of posts where I show photos of my special mix of dried bekang (fermented beans), nghapih (shrimp paste) and vaihmarcha rawt dip (special chilly powder) mixed with non-Mizo dishes, conjuring up a delicious mouth watering taste.
Before I begin, here is a picture of the nghapih I’m using… I keep it in the fridge.
So as I mentioned in my previous post, I discovered one particular combination of this dish with other dish that tastes HEAVENLY, so here’s a step by step method on how I prepare this wonderful concoction (I think I should probably patent my ingredients before some rich corporate steals my idea and makes millions out of it :P )
I call this, the BoonKangPih.
First, keep all the ingredients ready
Now heat around 50ml of water… the quantity depends on how many people are going to eat, sometimes it can be less, sometimes more.
Take roughly 2-3 tbsp of bekang (since I am making it for one serving) and throw the dried fermented beans into the boiling water…
As the bekang water boils, take one tablespoon of chilly powder and add to the pan. As I have mentioned before, this is special chilly powder from Mizoram, extremely spicy, at least 5 times spicier than the regular chilly powder you get outside North East India.
After that, add three pinches of salt to taste…
Now that everything is finely boiling, add one tbsp of the main ingredient nghapih…
Stir well. Make sure the nghapih is properly mixed with the bekang. Also make sure the kitchen exhaust fan is switched on, lolz.
Once everything is properly mixed, switch off the flame and leave it as it is for around 5 minutes. The dried bekang will slowly soak in the water.
Now comes the next big thing -> Take out freshly made Boondi raita from the fridge and mix the bekang-nghapih to it! Thaa daaaa… my scrumptious BOON-KANG-PIH dish is now ready!!!! The sudden mixture of cold and hot elements reacts to add extra flavor to this dish, leaving an awesome long lasting after taste in your mouth!
It goes extremely well with alu paratha…
But since I had been having parathas quite regularly, this time I decided to try it with mutton biryani… Oh Thy Godddd, it was sooo freaking awesome!!!!
So that’s it… you have just witnessed the creation of my boonkangpih (pronounced Boon - Kang - Pih :P ) and hope you get to try it out one day too… Take care :)
BONUS:
I tried out this dish yesterday and it was really good too. Bekang+Nghapih mixed with South Indian dishes like medu vada, steamed idli and rava masala dosa. The mixture especially goes well with coconut chutney, a must try!
Cheers :)
