Julie Kleeman - Taste Tibet: Family recipes from the Himalayas

Yeshi and Julie are brilliant at explaining how traditional dishes are eaten on the Tibetan Plateau, yet their recipes are so clear and reassuring they will appeal to readers anywhere.

Fuchsia Dunlop, author of The Food of Sichuan

A true culinary delight!

Ken Hom, OBE, chef, author and broadcaster

Nourishing, simple, seasonal food that heals as well as fuels:

this way of eating might be popular today, but it has been traditional in Tibet for over 8,000 years. Taste Tibet is a collection of over 80 recipes from the Tibetan plateau, written for todays home cook. Create comforting soups and stews, discover the secrets of hand-pulled noodles, and learn everything you need to know about making and eating momo dumplings, Tibets most legendary and addictive culinary export.

Alongside the recipes, award-winning food writer Julie Kleeman and Tibetan cook Yeshi Jampa, who run the Taste Tibet restaurant and food stall, interweave stories of Yeshis childhood in Tibet, and the shared love of food that brought them together. They reveal nomadic Himalayan food culture and practices, including mindful eating and communal cooking a way of life that celebrates family, togetherness and respect for food while exploring the relationship between landscape and diet, evoking the simple, subtle and unique flavours of Tibet.

This warm and engaging cookbook shines a rare light on the fascinating food traditions of Tibet. Yeshi and Julie are brilliant at explaining how dishes such as momo dumplings and sweet ceremonial rice are traditionally eaten on the Tibetan Plateau, yet their recipes are so clear and reassuring they will appeal to readers anywhere. The accompanying photographs offer a glimpse of the captivating beauty of Tibet and an intimate portrait of Tibetan family life.

Fuchsia Dunlop, bestselling author of Every Grain of Rice

A fascinating exploration of a cuisine steeped in mystique and wonder. The recipes do not just echo the ethos of a people, but are an ode to the most unique of landscapes. I cannot wait to bring a little taste of Tibet to my London kitchen.

Dr Saliha Mahmood Ahmed, author of Khazana and Foodology

Julie and Yeshi have put together a book that captivates you right from the beginning. The images of the country and the food alongside so many wonderful explanations engross you completely. The recipes I have tried are sublime and I cannot wait to cook literally everything in it. Its comforting, healthy, healing and incredibly full of flavour. Time for Tibet to be on a global culinary map!

Jouidie Kalla, author of Palestine on a Plate

Fantastic recipes with so much love and passion put into this book! Yeshi and Julie brilliantly captured the essence of what Himalayan food, culture and tradition are all about!

Norman Musa, author of Amazing Malaysian

One of the most exciting aspects about being in the food and cooking world for over six decades is the discovery of Taste Tibet. The book is an insight into a culture and its cuisine that is little known. It brings a once exotic destination into our lives and kitchens. A true culinary delight!

Ken Hom, OBE, chef, author and broadcaster

What an extraordinary book this is! At once a love story and recipe manual and a remarkable guide to a way of cooking and living still largely, mistakenly, unknown outside Tibet. If you have never been lucky enough to queue for, then devour Taste Tibets delicious momos in Oxfords outdoor food market, buy this book immediately to make them for yourself. Those lucky Oxford souls who already love Taste Tibets dumplings and curries will need no encouragement.

Sophie Grigson, author of My Kitchen Table

Julie Kleeman studied Chinese at Cambridge University and has been travelling and eating in Asia since 1992. She lived in Beijing for many years, where she worked as the Chief Editor of the Oxford Chinese Dictionary. Yeshi Jampa grew up in Tibet, herding livestock on the high reaches of the plateau and learning to cook inside a yak hair tent at a young age. When he was nineteen, Yeshi walked across the Himalayas to northern India, where he and Julie later met. Yeshis soups and stir-fries won Julies heart, and they are now married with two children and living in Oxford, UK. Together, they own and run the Taste Tibet restaurant and festival food stall, a Guardian and BBC Good Food Top Ten pick, and a finalist in the Best Street Food or Takeaway category in the 2021 BBC Food and Farming Awards. Julie and Yeshi share a passion for food and wellbeing, and have made it their mission to get Tibet on the global food map.

C o nt e nts

Khawa Karpo, the sacred Tibetan snow mountain.

Introducti o n

The act of bringing food is one of the
basic roots of all relationships.

His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile

Yeshis village in eastern Tibet.

Yeshi and Julie outside the Taste Tibet restaurant.

Our story

For as long as we have been together, Yeshi and I have dreamed about putting Tibet on the food map.

We met in 2009 in Dharamsala, northern India. Yeshi was a Tibetan studying in the famous hill town, and I was a tourist tagging a weeks break onto the end of a work trip to India. We first bumped into each other on a mountain path when we were both taking pictures of the snow monkeys, and later that evening Yeshi invited me back for a meal in the small concrete room he shared with a friend.

And that is where our food journey began. Yeshi had no sink in his house and no kettle. In one corner of the room was his kitchen, which was made up of just two small gas rings fired by a huge gas cylinder. Later I learned that you could only swap your empty cylinder for a full one once a week, when deliveries came into the main square at sunrise. It being a hill town, you had to carry your gas cylinder up and down many steps in the middle of the night and queue for hours, waiting for the truck to arrive. If you were too late and all the new cylinders were already spoken for, that meant no cooking at home for the next week.