Entry 8 Momos in Nepal

Saturday, 13 March 2010

I bazinga-ed my host family with my mo-mo folding skills. They did not see that coming. My folding style is Nanjing. I learnt it from a master (of interior design) from Nanjing. However, the difference in texture in the dough slowed me down. I think it was because they don’t add any egg to the dough, it was very….. Cannot find the right word there. Engineeringly speaking, the dough was really plastic with a really high surface tension. (Hence I am trying to get out more)

Obviously surprised and shocked that a foreigner can fold consistent mos, she then knocked off 3 different techniques. I was like wow, and she was like, ‘that is how you do it’. So I tried to learn but it takes years of practice so I stuck with my Nanjing moves.

Eventually after numerous momo meals, I learnt Nepal style (not very well though). It used the unique properties of the Nepali dough. The action of folding stretched the dough over the meat uniformly and resulting in a thin layer of dough covering the meat. I might be looking too deep into this but basically, momo is awesome.

This is my host family’s house, the Lama’s. The Lama’s being reasonably well off has good facilities. First of all, it offers me enough headroom to prevent excessive head banging. The tradition houses were so small. I cannot stand straight nor lay down straight in one room. It would have been pretty uncomfortable. The nepalis tend to be shorter. This must gave them better stability at climbing and running down hills. I was a bit like Bambi on ice. Keeping up with Prem (the mountain goat) was pretty tough at the start. They did grow up in these terrain. Eventually, I could make any jump he did.

Bungamati and Khokana were the more famous villages around KTM. I would not recommend others mainly because I hadn’t been to those places. There were actually historical places and places of interests in these two villages. Also the sizes of the houses found on the way to these villages are ridiculous. There are some rich folks living here. You might ask why I am volunteering here when there are more needy people out there. I would answer by, it was just happened by chance. I was lucky that I found somewhere to start. Hopefully, I made a difference and that might last.