I was brought to the food and people of Meghalaya way back in the seventies, within a visit to Shillong one wonderful summer. I had my first taste of sesame pork there - and became an instant fan of this north-eastern dish.

Time was when you referred to the north-east in Delhi, and people thought you meant Dilshad Garden. But one of the nicest developments in the last few years is the opening upwards of restaurants which serve food from the north-east of India.

To get started with, there was only Nagaland House, where I did previously have some scrumptious chicken curry cooked only with greens. Over time, other restaurants opened, such as and Dzukou, Rosang and Nagaland's Kitchen. Then I actually heard about the food being served at a restaurant called North Eastern Flavours in the Uphaar Cinema complex in Environmentally friendly Park - and determined I had to try it out.

The menu has dishes from across the north-east - from Nagaland and Manipur to Mizoram and Meghalaya, and from Sikkim and Assam to Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh. The particular various regions have their own characteristics. But there is a thread that runs through the region - the food is light and delightful. And often hot!

I love the pork preparations from this part of India. I actually have a friend from Sikkim who makes the most scrumptious pork plate with bitter gourd. The lady cuts the gourd into thin slices. In a little bit of olive oil, she fries garlic and then the pork. When it turns reddish, she provides chopped tomatoes, green chillies, ginger, salt and turmeric. She stirs it well, and then pressure cooks it. For half a kilo of pork, she adds 250g of karela.

The north-east region features of a wide variety of pork dishes - smoked pork, pork with bamboo shoots, smoked chicken with fermented soya veggie, pork with mustard greens and so on.

I had two scrumptious food at the restaurant - spare ribs from Nagaland and black sesame chicken from Meghalaya. If you loved this post and you would love to receive more details with regards to middle eastern food recipes kindly visit the page. The ribs were crunchy on the outside and soft and fatty inside, and was included with two varieties of chutneys - one red hot, tomato chutney, and one green hot chilli one! The ribs had been boiled, rubbed with environmentally friendly pepper, some herbs from Nagaland, and sesame seed products, and then fried in its own oil. Typically the sesame pork arrived solid gravy, flavoured with greens and herbs. Both were scrumptious.