Momo (Nepal / China / Tibet)

 

Talking to old friend Chris Dillon about the Nepalese restaurants on Euston Road in the 80s has woken up another memory.

    I used to go regularly to those two Nepalese restaurants in the 80s.

    One day, I discovered a dish called momo, which immediately conjured up “peach”  (桃 /もも)  in Japanese for me but is a dumpling.

    That was in the 80s.

    Fast forward to about a decade ago, no further back than that:  I then learned that there’s a food item called 饃饃 / 馍馍 mómo (dialect name for it, dictionary says), which is “mántou 饅頭 / 馒头 [steamed bun made of wheat flour]”.

    My immediate thought was:  the Nepalese had borrowed their momo from the Chinese one, i.e., learned it from the Chinese, which wouldn’t be surprising, given their geographical proximity, plus the fact that the influence of Chinese cuisine seems to have spread so much over time (cf. the claim that Marco Polo brought the concept of noodles back to Italy, which googling tells me is not true…)

    Googling the Nepalese momo for this blog, I find that it’s not copied from the Chinese!

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Momo is a dumpling made of all-purpose flour and filled with either meat or vegetables. Inspired by Tibetan dumplings, the dish is a very popular Nepali street food. In Nepal the most common type of momos are buff (buffalo) momos followed by chicken.

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    Googling the Chinese 饃饃 / 馍馍 then produces another surprise!

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馍馍（尼泊尔语：म:म、ममचा，藏语：མོག་མོག་，威利转写：mog mog）是一种源自西藏并流行于尼泊尔、不丹及印度等喜玛拉雅山地区的面食。其外型近似水饺或小笼包。

(Google Translate) Mog mog (Nepali: म:म, ममचा, Tibetan: མོག་མོག་, Wiley transliteration: mog mog) is a kind of pasta originating from Tibet and popular in Himalayan regions such as Nepal, Bhutan and India. Its appearance is similar to dumplings or steamed buns.

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    So, it looks like the Chinese have borrowed it from the Tibetans as well.

    A bit more digging seems to indicate that 馍馍 is mainly common in N.W.China, not so much in the south east nor in Taiwan.  (Not by this name anyway, although there may be versions that look similar — a round lump of dough with some kind of filling inside.)  It makes sense, too, since N.W.China is roughly the same geographical area as Tibet, ditto Nepal with Tibet, so it’d be natural for it to float around in the region.

(Nepal / China / Tibet)

The hidden message in Chinese food 06: consuming vinegar (Taiwan)

Another Conoco Taiwan local staff lunch outing was to a dumpling restaurant.  I was absolutely amazed at how many dumplings my colleagues could each eat.  Even the women could eat something like 25 of them at one sitting.

The simplest dip for dumplings is soya sauce and vinegar (醋 cù).  One can also add one or all of the following: chilli oil, sesame oil, garlic paste, ginger, chopped spring onion, coriander.  Anything that one fancies really, I guess.

My youngest colleague, Mary Fu 傅曼麗, then only 21 (three weeks younger than I), had her saucer filled with something like one part soya sauce and four parts vinegar.  

Accountant Cray Chang 張城隆, as usual, immediately remarked, “哇，你很会吃醋！wa, nǐ hěn huì chī cù / Wow, you very much know how to eat vinegar.”  

This was an obvious pun, because 吃醋 chī cù / “eat vinegar” in Chinese means “to get jealous”, so Cray was saying to Mary, “You get jealous easily (You’re very good at eating vinegar).”

Mary’s instant response was, 我只会吃湿醋，不会吃干醋 / wǒ zhǐ huì chī shī cù, bù huì chī gān cù / “I only know how to eat wet vinegar, not dry vinegar”.

(Taiwan, 1975)