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In 'An Invitation to Feast', food writer Sona Bahadur follows eleven iconic Indian dishes — among them biryani, dosai, chhole, and butter chicken — across the country, tracing their many versions and the people who keep them alive. Based on interviews and on-the-ground research in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Goa, the book resists pinning down singular origins. Instead, it embraces the contested, evolving nature of food traditions. Framed as “living history,” Bahadur’s narrative looks at how recipes intersect with memory, identity, and place — less a definitive culinary guide, more a story-driven map of what India eats and why.
The following excerpt from Bahadur's book has been reproduced here with due permission of the publisher, Aleph Book Company.
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THE CUISINE OF THE NORTHEAST was terra incognita to me. Having never visited the region before, I was wondering how to navigate this fascinating world. Which iconic food best represented the culinary culture of the eight northeastern states?
When I posed the question to my friend Roopa Barua, a documentary filmmaker who grew up in Jorhat, she deemed it a no-brainer. ‘Smoked meat, particularly pork,’ she said.
Though misconceptions about the region’s food abound (such as momo being the emblematic dish of these parts), it is this elemental ingredient and the dishes around it, Roopa opined, that truly represent the cooking of the northeast. In all its iterations across the area, the lusty, meaty flavour of smoked pork epitomises comfort. ‘It is to us what the tandoor is to Punjab,’ she revealed.
Roopa associated the beloved staple with winter picnics and campfires. The subject conjured memories of freshly smoked skewers of pork — hot, juicy, and infused with the flavour of smouldering logs. She recalled the sound of popping fat, and the pleasure of gnawing endlessly on the meaty chunks. ‘I can still feel my hands greasy with crackling,’ she said gleefully.
The transformative power of smoking had always intrigued me. Now, listening to Roopa’s rhapsodies, I needed no further convincing. As I began planning my sojourn, she introduced me to Geeta Dutta, an Assamese doctor who moonlights as a food blogger and influencer. A promoter of indigenous northeastern cuisines, Geeta has been documenting the foodways of the tribals for years and gets a lot of love on social media.
Loquacious and open-hearted, Geeta has deep knowledge of Assamese cuisine and a ready willingness to share it. We instantly hit it off. As we brainstormed, she named a slew of memorable dishes from the region — smoked pork with wild foraged greens from Assam; wahan mosdeng, a smoked pork salad from Tripura; smoked pork with axone from Nagaland; vawksa rep leh antam, or smoked pork with mustard leaves, from Mizoram.
Before long, I was dreaming of these delicacies. I longed to visit every state and taste each dish Geeta had described. Sadly, that wasn’t possible. So we narrowed down my adventures to three states — Nagaland, Assam, and Meghalaya.
As we connected over a last telecon before my trip, Geeta had just one piece of heartfelt advice for me: ‘Discover the northeast with an open heart, and a curious palate.’
DIMAPUR
Smoked Pork and Axone with Joel Basumatari
As my plane touched down in Dimapur, I felt a rush of excitement. Joel Basumatari, a master of haute Naga cuisine, was at the airport to receive me along with his little boy Aiden. The chef, who has been racking up awards for his work on slow food and tribal cuisines, had promised me a taste of his cooking. But first, he whisked me off to the local market to give me a crash course in Naga ingredients.
With its endless pyramids of exotic herbs, wild edibles, and creepy-crawlies, Super Market (named so) feels like a brave new world to the newcomer. I could barely recognise anything. ‘Welcome to Nagaland,’ Joel teased, noting the lost look on my face.
Strolling around the stalls, he pointed out the aromatic local ginger — smaller, spicier, and sharper than its regular counterpart — slender green stalks of wild Naga garlic, fire-engine-red tree tomatoes, and hillocks of raja mircha or ghost peppers, responsible for the fireworks of Naga cooking.
On our way out, Joel stopped to buy parcels of axone, the traditional fermented soybean cake beloved by Nagas. The umami bomb, which speaks more of Southeast Asia than the Indian subcontinent, was displayed in two versions — a wet one wrapped in banana leaves, and a dry one encased in yam leaves. ‘Depending on the type you use, you will get a totally different version of the same dish,’ Joel told me, snagging the solid variant for our session that afternoon.
Joel, who supplies smoked meats and Naga sauces commercially from his backyard, had a state-of-the-art three-tiered smoker. When we entered his sprawling home, a few chunks of pork and beef were slowly smoking on the side, bathed in beautiful wood smoke.
A bout of frenzied cooking ensued. Joel, who is part Sema, part Angami, and part Kachari, was making awoshi kipiki ngo axone, or smoked pork with axone. A speciality of the Sema tribe, the Naga delicacy makes a mandatory appearance on Christmas and on weddings. ‘It’s the heart and soul of Naga cooking,’ Joel said, attributing the iconic status of the dish to its native ingredients and big flavours.
The sultry afternoon unfolded to the sounds of chopping and blending. To make the axone, Joel put a block of fermented beans in a pot of boiling water and left it to slowly cook for an hour. The pungent fragrance of the beans seemed to magnify manifold as they simmered, suffusing the kitchen with an earthy, funky aroma. When the water had evaporated, Joel added bite-sized pieces of smoked pork and local Naga chillies to the blend.
As the flavours melded and intensified, Joel rustled up a Naga chutney known as tathu by charring piquant tree tomatoes on the fire and blending them with green chillies, onions, Naga garlic, and shredded buffalo meat. ‘It’s my favourite,’ he smiled, proceeding to make a Naga ‘boil’ of mustard leaves and pumpkin.
When the axone was ready, Joel elevated the classic by adding lightly toasted majenga (Zanthoxylum oxyphyllum, a type of Szechuan pepper used widely in Naga cuisine) seeds to add a fruity, peppery bite. The final chef-inspired touch was a garnish of majenga leaves, fried to a crisp on slow flame. ‘They add a lovely crisp contrast to the tenderness of the pork,’ Joel said.
Robust, pungent, and complex, the dish was unlike anything I had ever tasted. It featured just a few ingredients, but the flavour-hit was massive. I found it remarkable that fermentation and smoking (as opposed to spices) could coax such depth of flavour out of a dish.
The interplay of salty, umami, funky, and savoury was a curious flavour spectrum for me. My palate struggled with the newness and strangeness of it all. Thankfully, Joel wasn’t the least bit offended. ‘Naga food is an acquired taste. Not everyone loves it at first bite, but once you have tasted it, you will feel like eating it again,’ he said encouragingly.
The chef stressed that notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in food are often cultural and rooted in upbringing. ‘The smell of axone is something I grew up with, so it doesn’t offend me. People in the mainland may dislike it, but to understand a new food, you need to accept its different-ness. You need to give it time,’ he said.
It was a powerful lesson. Rare delicacies and less familiar foods — blue cheese, oysters, caviar, century eggs — often demand a sense of commitment and perseverance to become pleasurable.
I didn’t fall in love with smoked pork and axone right away. Yet that first taste marked a watershed. The dish challenged my senses, jolting me out of my comfort zone.
That’s what made it great.
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Naga Smoking Techniques with Toshi and Annie Jamir
What alchemy of fire and wood turns a portly pig into silken-fleshed deliciousness?
I was hoping Annie Jamir, the owner of Longchen homestay, would detail out the processes, but she directed me to her husband. ‘Talk to Toshi. He’s a smoking hound. He’s hardcore,’ she said.
Clad in a black hat, white polo tee, and khaki shorts, Toshi joined us at the machang, an alfresco bamboo platform where breakfast was served the next morning. A purist at heart, he regards smoking as a true labour of love. ‘You gotta slog to get it right. There are no shortcuts,’ he said, his passion for the art reflecting in the seriousness of his expression.
The rituals of cleaning, curing, and smoking were muscle memory to the aficionado, who credited his early training to his mother. ‘Mum was a Khasi from Shillong, but more Naga in her ways than dad. She taught me to use every last morsel of the animal, including the hide,’ he shared.
Later, as an officer in the Assam Regiment, Toshi upped his smoking game by observing his batchmates. 'The regiment was a mix of people from different northeastern tribes — Kukis, Khasis, Bodos, Jaintias, Nagas, Mizos, and others. Each had his own technique and process, and we learnt constantly from one another,’ he recounted.
Thrown on the frontlines for months on end, smoking meat meant survival. ‘Wild boar, deer, jungle fowl, monkeys — we hunted and smoked it all. We had such a gala time, we even forgot our families!’ he said, guffawing.
The retired military man makes the most out of the working farm around their homestay — from the hogs penned in the woods to the open outer kitchen where he smokes meat throughout the year.
Though smoking techniques vary across the sixteen Naga tribes, the tried and tested method followed by Toshi is broadly representative. Sourcing his pork from the neighbourhood butcher, he insists on cleaning and cutting the carcass himself. Salting, which dehydrates the meat and serves an essential anti-microbial function, is the crucial next step. Toshi also uses a coarse, dry rub of cracked pepper mixed with red chillies or dried lemon leaves to flavour the meat. ‘You can use any spice you like. Just keep it simple,’ he said, adding that the flavour of the meat must not be overwhelmed.
Smoking organically over traditional bamboo racks, Toshi likes to build and tend his fires manually. The charred appeal of smoked meat, he explained, derives in large part from the chemical properties of hardwood. Cellulose and lignin, present in the cells of wood, yield aromatic compounds during combustion, imparting a toasty scent. The Maillard reaction, responsible for the browning of meat, does the rest, imbuing the flesh with subtle savoury, sweet, and bitter flavour notes.
The end result — a preserved, flavoured, and partially cooked hunk of meat — is used by each of the Naga tribes differently. Toshi swore by his signature dish, a searingly pungent smoked pork and bamboo shoot curry. ‘It’s sure to make you sweat,’ he promised.
Luckily, tamoming, the Changki delicacy the couple fed me, was anything but lethal. Made from smoked pork cooked with mashed potatoes, tomatoes, and dried chillies, its taste was mellow, with the subtle spiciness from the herbs gently seasoning the dish.
My session with the Jamirs was revelatory. When Nagas smoke meat, they keep alive the most ancient method of preserving food known to mankind. Transcending mere utility, the ritual channels a primitive, almost atavistic, desire to connect with our prehistoric past. Aeons ago, someone put some flesh over flame and turned it into a piece of smoky scrumptiousness.
It must have felt like abracadabra then. To me, it still does.
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Sona Bahadur's 'An Invitation to Feast: A deep dive into India's culinary treasures' is published by Aleph Book Company (Rs 899, 288 pages).
