Momos from the Tomb Raider Cookbook
Momos are a Nepalese and Tibetan steamed dumpling, often served with an achar (dipping sauce). The wrapper is made with a white flour and water dough and the Momos are filled with chicken, pork, mutton, even yak, or a combination. The Tomb Raider Cookbook's version uses chicken and pork and serves them with a tomato achar.
Nepal is an important part of the origin story of Lara Croft in each of the Tomb Raider continuities. In the Core Design timeline, Lara survived a plane crash in Nepal when she was 21, walking through the Himalayas by herself until she reached a village. This experience led her to pursue a life of adventure.
In the timeline starting with Tomb Raider: Legend, Lara was 9 and her mother Amelia was with her. Amelia disappeared when she interfaced with a stone dais inside a monastery, forcing Lara to trek to Kathmandu alone. As an adult, she returns to the crash site to retrieve the Ghalali Key, which can reforge Excalibur, and then revisits the temple where Amelia vanished to assemble the weapon.
At the end of Tomb Raider: Underworld, Lara returns to this temple from Avalon/Helheim through a portal, bidding a bittersweet goodbye to Amelia. The Survivor Trilogy, which rewrote Lara's origin story, establishes that Amelia crashed alone in the Himalayas and died of her injuries. Since Crystal Dynamics now intends to unify the timelines, it'll be interesting to see how much of Legend and Underworld are retconned to ensure Lara's story remains consistent.
Anyway, Momos. Much like the Pelmeni, they require some manual labor, but are really not that complicated. You start by making a dough that only has four ingredients: flour, water, salt and oil. Since it's not a bread that rises, there's no leavening agent. You need room temperature water; since the water I poured from the tap came out rather cold, I microwaved it at ten second intervals until it took the chill off. Then you're supposed to knead it for ten minutes in a bowl, cover it and allow it to hydrate for half an hour.
Dough mise en place and dough itself.
The filling for this recipe, as I said, is ground pork and chicken, along with cilantro (I used parsley), red and green onions, garlic, ginger and spices. Curiously, the filling ingredients call for 3 tbsp melted salted butter, although this is not mentioned in the written recipe. Since that didn't make sense to me, I left it out. Maybe that was to keep the meat tender or make a bit of a soup dumpling in the end, I'm not sure. Once the filling is mixed up, it's kept in the fridge until needed.
Filling mis en place and mixed up.
The last component to make these is the tomato achar, which is a cooked down sauce made with fresh tomatoes, turmeric, onions, chillies, garlic, ginger and other spices. You're supposed to use two dried chillies, although I didn't have any, so I used a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. In the interest of time, I had one of my guests help me form the dumplings while the other cooked the achar ingredients until the tomatoes were soft and breaking down, at which point I pureed the sauce. The process, since the achar had turmeric, turned my wooden spoon golden yellow.
Tomato achar before, during and after.
Assembling the Momos took a while, even with some help. In fairness, none of us had ever made these before. This whole process of cooking through the Tomb Raider and Netflix Cookbooks has been a learning experience, pushing us to try making things we might not have done on our own.
The cookbook offers two methods to cook the Momos: the more traditional steamer basket, or steaming them in a pan like potstickers. I do have a steamer basket, although in the interest of making sure we got them done as it was quite late, I opted for the potsticker method. I seared them on the bottom in a hot pan with oil before pouring in water and trapping the steam inside with a lid. Ten minutes later, the first batch was cooked. The recipe makes 50 but we made 45.
The stages of Momos from forming
The Momos came out deliciously! They're very filling, but they were great. The tomato achar was a bit spicy from the chili flakes I added, while being rich and deep in flavor. I cooked a second batch of Momos and then sent my friends home with some achar and uncooked Momos, along with instructions on how to cook them. The rest of the Momos were kept in the fridge to be steamed the following day for lunch. Another successful dish.
If you want to make this recipe for Momos yourself, you can find it in Tomb Raider: The Official Cookbook and Travel Guide.
