Many of us have committed to a new, healthy start for the new year, excluding alcohol, meat and other foodstuffs from our diets in a bit to raise sapping energy levels after a season of overindulgence.
Natural foods are best for a detox, and the best recipe for a balanced diet. In Tibet, our vegetables are grown by the same hand that later chops them up for the family meal. Preparing and cooking food from scratch is the most effective way to keep healthy, but if you don’t have time to do this for yourself, who can you trust?
Taste Tibet uses only fresh, natural ingredients in our food, and as far as possible we try to use vegetables that have been locally produced. Some are grown barely a mile from Oxford’s Gloucester Green market, where we have our regular Wednesday stall. Every week a Chinese lady comes by with a big bunch of Chinese chives. She grows them in a nearby allotment. They are garlicky in flavour, and juicy and crisp in texture. We use them in our veg momo dumplings, and our momos wouldn’t be the same without them!
We season our food with sea salt or Himalayan pink salt, which is additive-free, and many of our dishes are infused with yerma, a peppercorn that comes to us direct from our home town in Tibet. This beautiful, organically-grown spice is a staple in Tibetan cooking, and it is also widely used in Tibetan medicine for its ability to help with indigestion, gastric pain and even hangovers!
Tibet has a long history of healing through food. This is a fascinating area that we hope to cover more fully in future blog posts. For now, whether you have failed at a dry January, or have simply resolved to take more care over your diet in 2017, you can trust us to look after you. If you have any questions about our food, where it comes from, and how we cook it, just ask! Post a question in the comments, or come and talk to us at the stall, where you can also watch us at work.
#vegan #tibetan #food #healthy #homegrown #organic #vegetables
