Nepali familiar food gundruk “Sadheko”

26,jestha.

Over the past several months I have been slowly exploring Nepali food and cooking with rare items from our local supplier of foodstuffs from Nepal, on S. 7th St. in South Philly . Every time I go in there I come away with at least one new ingredient or condiment that opens my eyes to a new culinary horizon. The shop owners Julio and Sovannary are always happy to talk about how their very specialized stock of ingredients can be used, and I always learn good things about Burmese and Nepali food when chatting with them. They have recently acquired some cookbooks to have on hand to help shoppers get a sense of how some of these exotic ingredients come together in Nepali and Burmese dishes (ask to take a look at them–they’re behind the counter).

One very important Nepali ingredient and flavor that I have been obsessed with lately is gundruk , a fermented and then sun dried mix of leafy greens (and sometimes roots). It is a very intensely flavored ingredient, full of funk and umami. Although the vegetables used to make gundruk are quite familiar to me (these are leaves and stems of saag vegetables: mustard greens, radish, cauliflower leaves), the taste of the end product is utterly unique.

After the dried leaves are re-hydrated briefly in hot water, they can be used in salads or “pickles” (i.e. achar), and dry leaves can be added to directly to soups. When tasted, there is a slight “barnyard” flavor at the outset, followed by a heavy and addictive umami. In sampling this ingredient in soup preparations I am reminded of the savory pleasure of a great Korean soybean stew (doenjang jjigae) or Northern Thai stew with “rotten bean sheets” . As a salad/achar preparation I am reminded of the punch and tang of Burmese tea leaf salads . Gundruk’s bold flavor would be perfectly matched with rice and some comparatively less flavor heavy sides of lentils