The day I learned how to make Momo's

Sunday 1th of September.
This morning I joined Tiphaine for her work, (she works from Sunday until Friday),
to learn how to cook momo's! I ended up having my course with a Russian girl and the chef Shakuntala (a woman that just suddenly starts laughing at almost anything you say).

We started by going to the market a few hundred meters away. I've been looking forward to this for a little while; too see where locals go to buy their everyday stuff! It isn't always easy for a westerner that's used to having big shops filled with everything you need.

Here though it seems like everything is sold by tiny boutiques smaller then our bedroom! We had to go to 3 different places to get all the ingredients we needed, vegetables and yak cheese. Yes yak cheese! The most commonly found cheese here which is surprisingly good and strong tasting. Coming back to SocialTours we were set to each our task, I started by cutting red onions since I was wearing glasses I had "less chance" of crying like a baby while cutting !

My instruction was "cut as small as possible", which I tried and after 1 min I showed my result proudly. "Nej nej nej, smaller!" Grunting I keep cutting another minute, not really noticing a big difference, "nej nej nej, smaller!" ... Hrmf ok! 2 minutes more, "Nej nej nej smaller! As small as possible" well I thought I had done that! I just keep going and after 3 more minutes cutting like I was Jack the Ripper I was done and she was happy! Now just 5 more times like that..... After 2 hours we had finished the shopping, the cutting all the vegetables (I used almost all my time on the onions) and the preparing, now for the interesting part, the sauce and the folding.

For the sauce we started first with oil and sesame seeds, and then when they were black we added ginger and garlic. After that it simmered a little bit with some chopped tomatoes before we blended half of it, this was the weak "tourist sauce" :P We blended the rest with 2,5 chilies and even more sesame seeds and that was that, a very easy and quick recipe for a tasty dipping sauce.

Now for the folding, the hardest part, we had made small circular pieces of dough slightly bigger than a normal cup. We put the vegetable filling in the middle of the dough in our hand, then we proceeded in pinching our way around in a half moon pattern, for the other type a cheese and spinach one, we did similar but instead we pinch everything towards the middle in a circle so it ended up like a round ball.
Not very easy to explain and not very interesting either! But maybe later we can make it together ;)
Anyway, after the folding it needs 10-15 minutes steaming and then its bon appétit! Delicious momo's !