The Indian subcontinent · Volume 24, Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh, Sikkim and Darjeeling
Ema datshi
Bhutan
Illustration
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 116 sources in the brief
Bhutan's national dish inverts the usual chilli logic entirely: chilli here is the vegetable, eaten in bulk, not a seasoning measured by the pinch, cooked down with datshi, a fresh, unaged farmhouse cheese, into a dish so central that "an average Bhutanese family uses more than two or three dozen chillies in a day." No Bhutanese-press recipe giving exact quantities could be found despite real effort; the working recipe below is the best available, cross-checked across several sources, but should be read with that caveat attached.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 200 g fresh green or red chillies, sliced lengthways, seeds left in
- 1 medium onion, sliced
- 1 tomato, chopped
- 2 tbsp oil
- a splash water
- a pinch salt
- a generous knob butter
- 150 to 200 g datshi cheese, crumbled
- to serve Bhutanese red rice
Method
- Combine the sliced chillies, onion and tomato in a heavy pan with the oil, a splash of water and a pinch of salt, and simmer covered until the chillies are fully soft, 15 to 20 minutes.
- Off the heat, stir through the butter and the crumbled datshi cheese, folding gently until the cheese melts into the sauce rather than dissolving into it entirely, the finished dish should still show flecks of cheese, not present as a uniform sauce.
- Serve immediately over Bhutanese red rice.
What a modern chef changes
A stabilised cheese emulsion and a layered chilli
Method
- First, use three chilli preparations in one dish rather than one, fresh green for grassy heat, a small proportion of dried red rehydrated for depth, and a little of the white sun-dried style for a fermented, slightly funky top note, layering the chilli character the way the tradition's single fresh form cannot.
- Second, build a proper cheese sauce technique underneath the traditional fold: make a light roux-thickened base first, so the datshi, or, honestly, in a British kitchen, the nearest workable substitute, see Sourcing above, melts into a stable emulsion rather than risking the split a straight cheese-and-liquid mix can suffer.
- Third, char a portion of the chillies directly over a flame before they go into the pan, for a smoky depth the boiled version alone does not have.
- Fourth, finish with a dusting of dehydrated tomato powder, made from the trim of the tomato already in the dish, for a concentrated, savoury top note rather than an ingredient foreign to the plate.