LAYER UPON

LADAKH'S CUISINE IS INFUSED WITH MANY CULTURES. A NEW GENERATION OF TASTEMAKERS.

- SMITHA MENON

In Ladakh, everything revolves around the kitchen hearth, or "thap"-even time. Many older Ladakhi homes have an opening through which the first rays of sunlight fall directly onto these earthen stoves, not only warming them before the cooking begins, but turning them into sundials. As day becomes night, the shafts of light shift, cinematically capturing the dance of smoke in the air, while the thap casts shadows that tell the time.

In Nilza Wangmo's kitchen, in the monastic mountain village of Alchi, it's just past one o'clock and the light has moved off the centre of the thap. From between her flour-coated palms, long, silken strands of noodles fall softly into a bowl. "When I cook, I feel as if my mother is with me," says the soft-spoken, bespectacled 43-year-old, as she watches over her all-women kitchen crew. It was her late mother who taught her to cook timsthuk, an earthy noodle soup brightened by Ladakhi peas, dried cheese and wild chives. Now, it is one of the star dishes at Alchi Kitchen, a rustic, wood-engraved restaurant-lined with traditional copper pots, filigreed plates and bright-red tables-that she set up above her home. Guests sit around the thap as Wangmo and her team turn out steamed momo dumplings and chutagi, a thick soup with local pasta and mountain vegetables.