donderdag 6 maart 2014

Tsampa breakfast for Westerners


Ingredients
Tsampa (roasted barley), 2 to 4 table spoons
Ghee (Clarified butter), 1 table spoon
Hot water
Honey or other sweetener (except white sugar)
Pinch of rock salt

Ideas for flavoring:
(Roasted) sesame seeds
Ground coconut
Crushed cashew nuts
Nutmeg/cinnamon

Preparation
Put the ghee in a bowl  and add some hot water to melt the ghee. Then add the Tsampa, and for example a table spoon of sesame seeds, a teaspoon of coconut, honey, some nutmeg and a pinch of rock salt. Then add more hot water until the desired thickness. Tibetans eat it quite dry but most westerners probably prefer to have it similar to porridge.

Notes
Tsampa or roasted barley has a sweet taste, and is light, cooling and dry. It is easy to digest and has been recommended for everyone again and again by Tibetan doctors as a very healthy breakfast. Tibetans eat it with salty butter tea, but tea is not recommended for wind persons. Since barley is dry vata (lung/wind) constitutions should definitively add some ghee, or else butter or oil to counteract the dryness. Since the morning is cold, the heating quality of sesame seeds and nutmeg or cinnamon is an excellent addition to make the dish more warming.


Tsampa breakfast is also very convenient because all the ingredients, including the ghee, can be stored at room temperature for a long period without going to waist. And when traveling, all you need to add is hot water or tea.

Making Tibetan medicine with Amchi Tsering Zangcho

Today I had the great fortune to be able to give lama Tsering Zangcho a hand while making his medicine. He is the doctor of Chatral Rinpoche and some say he makes the best medicine in nepal. We also made some mendrup for a -Longchen Nyingtik- Dukngal rangdrol mendrup .



First we had to clean the medicine, take out all the dirt and stones and so on. Then some ingredients had to be sliced into smaller pieces, for example pieces of the trunk of the red and white sandal wood tree. Some ingredients are quite well known, like nutmeg, cardamom, clove, kakola, seeds of pomegranate, and saffron. But others, like certain flowers or resins from trees, I and probably most other people have never heard of before. Then finally we put all the ingredients back in the bags, to take them to the grinder. Once they are grinned and mixed they are made into pills.

something that looked like old composted tree bark

certain tree barks 

different ingredients for Dukngal Rangdrol pills


some unknown roots of a plant