Featured images courtesy Instagram @cynthiadoley and Facebook
Remember sitting by the kitchen shelf, watching your nani (maternal grandmother) cook magic on the stove? Or going on a trail with your baba (father), where you both prepared a meal steeped in stories — a recipe passed down for generations?
Whether it’s annakoot sabzi, cooked during Govardhan Puja in Mathura, the rich kewami sevaiyaan from the bylanes of Lucknow, or laal maas, simmered in Jaipur homes during special occasions — our food holds stories. Recipes are love notes from the past, carrying memory, culture, and care.
In Food Diaries, The Better India explores such traditional recipes that aren’t just meals, but markers of heritage. Today, we take you into the verdant forests of Assam, where Cynthia Doley is helping revive age-old tribal cooking — not in a fancy studio kitchen, but through her warm and rustic homestay.
Coming home to cook: Cynthia’s Journey into tribal culture
After quitting her job in the city, Cynthia Doley felt a longing that modern life couldn’t fulfil — the call of her roots, her people, and her cuisine. She returned to her native village, Majuli, Assam, determined to preserve the culinary practices of her community, especially the ones deeply entwined with forest produce.
Her homestay, Menam, is a living museum of tribal flavours. One of the standout recipes Cynthia shared on her social media is a bamboo-cooked dish that includes pork and sticky rice combined with wild herbs.
The process is as intricate as it is intuitive. First, bamboo stalks are carefully cut and hollowed out to be used as natural cooking vessels. Then begins the layering of flavours: pork is mixed with wild herbs like Ombe (Mesaki Paat), Takuk (Dimolu Paat), Tazig, Takpiang, Pakkom, Marsang, and Bon Tulakhi (wild tulsi) — all gathered fresh from nearby forests.
Once the pork is marinated with crushed leaves, tomato, ginger, king chilli, mustard oil, kaji nemu (an Assamese lime), and a bit of bamboo juice, it is mixed with soaked sticky rice and stuffed into the bamboo tubes. These are then slow-cooked over a wood fire.
The bamboo blackens as it roasts, and when finally split open, it releases an earthy, smoky aroma. The pork turns buttery-soft, and the rice soaks in every bit of the bamboo’s subtle flavour.
Watch the video here:
A meal wrapped in forest, fire, and memory
What Cynthia and her mother serve isn’t just food — it’s a translation of their love for their culture and roots. The pork-and-rice dish is accompanied by bamboo shoot king chilli pickle, Kharoli (a mustard-based chutney), and a glass of homemade white rice beer called Upong, completing the soulful spread.
Cynthia’s mission is simple yet profound: to preserve the culinary knowledge of her ancestors and pass it on — not just to travellers, but to future generations.
Food stories and legacy cuisines are a reminder of the beauty in slowing down, foraging from the land, and the magic of cooking together. When the kitchen becomes a space where time pauses and memories simmer, recipes turn into memoirs — passed lovingly from one generation to the next.
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