Ginger lilies, king chillies and a Manipuri dish

For someone who cooks the best pork I have ever eaten, Akoijam Sunita confesses that she didn't cook very much all her life.

- SAMAR HALARNKAR

"I never really had to cook," says Akoi, as she is known. "I was never considered the person to be cooking." When she was younger, her mother ran the kitchen, and when she was at university in Delhi, she lived with her two brothers who did the cooking.

Akoi's first serious foray into the kitchen came when she wanted to introduce her Manipuri Metei food and culture to her then-boyfriend and now husband Nitin Sethi, a journalist. She wanted to endorse what she talked about in action, and there was no better way to do that than to cook, for what better expression of culture is there than food.

That, I suppose, is how cooking c nes to those of us, such as myself, who are not compelled to do it-by happenstance or along a bend in the river of life.

Today, Akoi and two friends, Bidotama Aribam and Mardza Akham, run Lomba Kitchen in Delhi, a supplier of Manipuri home-cooked meals (you can find them on Instagram or WhatsApp them at 8798394538) that you are unlikely to find in any restaurant. I got to know of Lomba Kitchen-named after a citrusy Manipuri herb and plant-when her husband started sending me their weekend menus on WhatsApp.

Their suti numit ki mathel, or homemade meal for Sunday, included everything that I loved but especially smoked pork with bamboo shoot, although there were many ingredients I was unfamiliar with, and a meat I had not eaten before-river snail. I have often used the fiery king chilli, called U-morok in Meteilon, but I did not know of, among others, wild coriander or ginger lily.