East Indian Cuisine

This page on East Indian cuisine covers foods from the states of: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram.

Where it is available fish is the most popular dish in East Indian cooking but because of the large amount of rainfall, rice is also very common. The further north you go, all they way up to Bengal, the more fish is used as a staple but the states further inland who rarely get the opportunity of fish have to be more imaginative with the use of rice. Many types of rice have been created over the years and all involve different colours, textures and flavours.



In the North East of India, in Bengal the chefs are almost prefectionists when it comes to cooking and the result is something special. Not too spicy and not too faint, most meals will involve spices such as Cumin (green and black), green chillies, mustard seed, curd, cashew nuts and poppy seeds. They are made into curries and eaten with various types of rice. Bangledesh's food is a delicate mix of North Indian, Bengali and has a definite hint of Pakistani cuisine.

Typical East Indian cuisine usually consists of a a rice dish with fish and various plates of mixed vegetables such as Dalma. Deep fried vegetables, usually mashed, are common and for pudding Pitha which is a rice based dessert which originated in East India but can now be found all over.

Further Reading

The Food of India

This gorgeous oversized hardback has an excellent range of beautiful recipes for everything an Indian Kitchen should have including how to make panner, chenna, yoghurt, strange Indian vegetables and more. The illustrations are spectacular and are accompanied by little blurbs and pieces of information relating to the food.

Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices

This award winning book has been highly acclaimed by chefs, authors and critics for a few years now and is an essential item in any food lovers bookshelf. The book Skillfully move backward and forward in time covering everything about Indian food with the intimacy of a native, the curiosity of an outsider and the broad vantage of an expatriate.

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