Traditional Tibetan fare mainly
consists of two basic items, salted tea mixed
with yak butter, and tsampa. Tsampa is a coarse
flour made from parched barley whose main virtues
are that it is nourishing and ( in a land where
fuel is scarce) it does not need to be cooked.
The tea, brewed in water, comes from bricks
of tea has been a major trade item for over
800 years. The brewed tea is poured into a long
cylindrical churn make of wood banded with brass,
along with salt and a small lump of butter.
After vigorous churning, the opaque liquid is
decanted into a teapot or a thermos, where it
is kept for drinking throughout the day. ( Sometimes
a more concentrated brew is made with added
wood-ash soda to bring out the colour, and later
churned with added hot water, salt and butter.)
The resulting drink is more like bouillon than
tea as Westerners or Chinese know it. The body
needs this extra fat intake to power its higher
metabolic rate at high altitude, especially
in cold weather. Tea provides a constant source
of hydration and is everywhere socially important.
Mixed with ( tsampa, this tea
makes an edible paste. Add some dried yak meat
or chiura ( dried cheese crumbs made from the
residue of boiled buttermilk ) and it with the
fingers of the right hand while the left hand
while the left hand rotates the bowl; a visitor's
first attempt at this invariably dumps half
the contents on the floor, to gales of laughter
from his Tibetan hosts. The best tsampa, like
good coffee, is fresh-roasted and ground, enough
for a week at a time, and has a nutty flavor.
Drokpa ( nomad) yak-herders produce
a wonderful yoghurt from the thick creamy milk
produced by their drinks ( yak cows; a yak is
actually a bull). Its strong flavor comes from
the special process of manufacture. The milk
from the evening milking is boiled, left in
a pail overnight to turn into yoghurt, and mixed
with boiled milk from the following morning's
milking before being churned. It is this half-yoghurt
mixture, not rancidity, that gives Tibetan butter
its strong taste. In eastern Tibet, the evening
and morning milk are churned separately to produce
sweet butter, sometimes also found in the street
market in Lhasa. In some low valleys around
Lhasa, the milk comes from recently introduced
cattle herds
