Ema Datshi or chili cheese is the national dish of Bhutan. It is delicious, easy to like, simple to tune to different tolerances for spicy heat, and the ingredients are widely available around the world. It is literally what its name say it is, chili and cheese.
Enjoying dairy products like milk, butter and cheese from yak and cow has been part of Bhutanese culture for a long time. The love of chili pepper was more recent. The Portuguese brought chili peppers from Central America to India in the 1500s, and from there, the hot spice / vegetable travelled to Bhutan, arriving in the 1600s.
Today, Bhutanese cuisine and life cannot be imagined without hot chili peppers. To Bhutanese, chili peppers are a vegetable, not a spice.
Traditional Bhutanese lunch. This ema datshi dish is made with more red chili pepper, hence the red colour.
Ema Datshi recipe is highly adaptable, in that it is easy to adjust it to suit locally available types of chili pepper and cheese.
The recipe consists of three basic stages:
Cut vegetables
Cook vegetables
Melt and mix with cheese & butter, serve!
That's all.
Simple.
Ingredients
Aromatics & vegetables
Garlic
Onion
Ginger
Spring onion
Tomato
All these aromatics and vegetables are easily available yet none are mandatory. Just put in the things you like from the list above.
Dairy
Cheese
Butter
Any melty cheese is fine, except stringy cheese like mozzarella. So, we can use processed cheese, cheddar, cottage, brie, halloumi, etc.
Chili
Green pepper (capsicum, jelapeno, etc) 🫑
Green chili
Red chili 🌶️
Both fresh chili pepper and dried chili pepper can be used, either separately or together. Together, they made a better chili cheese dish, in my opinion. To use dried chili, rehydrate by soaking in water before using.
Method
Slice the onions
Slice the ginger
Chop the garlic
Dice the tomatoes
The chili pepper are sliced lengthwise into thick broad strips
Discard the stalk, core and seeds
Put everything into a saucepan - onion, ginger, garlic, tomatoes, and chili pepper
Add salt, water and oil
Cover and simmer at medium heat
When the chili soften, lower the heat
Add chopped spring onion
Add processed cheese, cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, etc.
Add butter
Cover and let the contents simmer at low heat till the butter and cheeses melt (about two minutes)
Uncover and stir to mix the contents well
Turn off the heat, garnish with spring onion, and cover
Alternatively, put the vegetables, aromatics, chili pepper, and cheeses altogether with oil, water and salt, and simmer together till cooked.
Like a stew.
Already said this is a very flexible and versatile dish which is easy to prepare.
This is the method taught at the cooking school at The Musk restaurant in Thimphu, Bhutan.
Serve
Eat ema datshi with boiled or steamed rice
Bhutanese breakfast.
There are variations to ema datshi where chili is replaced by potato (kewa datshi), by mushroom (shamu datshi), etc.
Ema datshi is an easy, unusual and interesting potluck dish 🤭
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Written by Tony Boey on 7 Jan 2024
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