Yangzom Brewing: Eat a Gift

Try it ... that's delicious!

Yanzom Brauen, 29, prepares momos with her grandmother and mother, the family's favorite dish.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What role does eating play in your family's life?

Yangzom Brewing: A central. For example, when my grandmother meets her Swiss friends, they talk with their hands and feet because Mola speaks very little German and they eat together. Food is a way of communicating for us.

Sonam Brauen: That is certainly related to our Tibetan roots.

Yangzom Brauen: When you visit Tibetans, you get something preset, whether you like it or not. It is important to keep the cup and plate filled. For us western people that is sometimes annoying, you have to say several times clearly no and put your hands over the plate or mug ...

Sonam Brauen: In Europe we are used to abundance. But food is a gift in Tibet.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Sonam, how did your family feed in Tibet then?

Sonam Brauen: My parents were monks and nuns, such marriages are tolerated in a certain direction of Buddhism. When my mother meditated high up in the mountains, she had nothing, just a hut with a hearth and a pan. In the villages they got barley as a present, from that they made tsampa ...

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Tsampa is the Tibetan staple food - roasted and ground barley.

Sonam Brauen: That's for breakfast. You take three tablespoons of it, some cheese and hot tea on it - and that's wonderful, like a morning devotion. At lunchtime you eat wild vegetables, potatoes or herbs. Tsampa too. There is soup in the evening. With yak meat, if you have that.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Can devout Buddhists eat meat?

Sonam Brauen: Not really, and if they do, the flesh should come from big animals - so that their death was worth it. There were times when we had no choice, we had to eat what we could get. But before Mola ate meat, she prayed for the animal's soul, and then she blew the positive of prayer on the piece of meat.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Tsampa played a fateful role for you. When you had to flee the high mountains before the Chinese army of occupation, your father had it as the only food with ...

Sonam Brauen: And that saved our lives. Otherwise we would have starved to death in the cold. We could not make a fire, that would have been discovered by the Chinese soldiers. But Tsampa can also be mixed with cold water.

Yangzom Brewing: And the good thing is: even a few spoonfuls will last for a long time.

Tibet and Europe - both worlds have influenced me.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: You brought a wooden bowl ...

Sonam Brauen: This is the shell that I already had when I was six years old. At that time, I even ate it while running, so as not to lose my strength. Still today I prepare my tsampa in this bowl.

Yangzom Brewing: Try it!

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: It does not look like it - but it's delicious!

Sonam Brauen: Many are so surprised.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Sonam, you have set up a company that manufactures Tsampa. Why is it important to you that people in Europe get to know this typical Tibetan product?

Yangzom Brewing: There is no food that talks so much about Tibet. On the package is also a text about the situation of the country.

Sonam Brauen: Still, I never intended to do that. But more than 15 years ago, a large department store in Bern organized a Tibet week. I was asked if I could contribute anything. My husband said, do Tsampa, nobody knows that. Everyone is always talking about momos, the stuffed dumplings, but they can only afford the rich in Tibet. And I said, come on Martin, that's a powder, nobody is eating it.

Yangzom Brewing: But he was convinced.

Sonam Brauen: I gave in and roasted barley in the garden over the fire. I packed bags and wrote "Sonams Tsampa" - and nobody, nobody bought it!

Yangzom Brewing: You have to try Tsampa.

Sonam Brauen: So I let the people taste it, and meanwhile I told them about my escape. That interested people, everything went away suddenly. And afterwards I was asked again and again, where to buy it.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: When you reached India after the escape, you had to survive without Tsampa.

Sonam Brauen: In the Indian refugee camp we only got rice and lentils.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Is it true that some refugees have thrown away the lenses?

Sonam Brauen: We've never seen anything like it! And you could not ask how you made it, we did not speak the language.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: But when you're starving, can not you find a way?

Sonam Brauen: We had just descended from the mountains and then landed in an Indian barracks camp. Many were so exhausted that they got sick and had diarrhea. This heat and this dirty water. Actually, we longed for a bit of butter or yoghurt and some tsampa - even to calm our sick intestines. And then you get a sack of lentils. Most were just scared to say that they could not do it.

Sonam Dolma Brauen, 56, Yangzom's mother

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Is this a typical refugee problem?

Yangzom Brauen: Refugees are confronted with things they can not understand. And then they inadvertently do a great deal of wrong.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: You had similar difficulties understanding the stranger to food when you relocated to Switzerland with your Swiss husband and mother ...

Sonam Brauen: As a child I was convinced that Western food was heavenly, everything was healthy, the best of the best. But then I got to know it and noticed that there can also be harmful things in it. That was a shock ...

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: ... you have already experienced on the plane.

Sonam Brauen: We were served orange juice, I expected a treat. But the stuff was disgustingly sweet, watery and had nothing to do with oranges. My mother drank it stoically.

Kunsang Wangmo, 89, called Mola, is a Buddhist nun.

Yangzom Brauen: While Mola remained stuck in her religious world of ancient Tibet and accepted everything as given, my mother had to re-learn everything, deal with it, adapt herself.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What is the biggest difference between eating in Europe and in Tibet?

Sonam Brauen: In Europe, everything looks big and beautiful, all the vegetables and fruits in the supermarket, the appetizing-looking meat, the colorful sodas - but much of it just looks good. In Tibet, everything is small, the apricots, the nuts, and you have little. But the few actually taste very good.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: How did you deal with the disappointment you experienced in Europe?

Sonam Brauen: I checked what I bought. It's not all bad! And cooked a lot myself.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What's your favorite food, Yangzom?

Yangzom Brewing: Definitely Momos, Tibetan meat pockets. The rich Tibetans fill them with meat, the poorer vegetables. For ordinary people, they are a feast. And, like all Tibetan dishes, they can be eaten by hand. That was the biggest thing for me as a child.

Sonam Brewing: Depending on how you prepare it, the edge has to be pleated: A steamed momo gets a different edge than one that you fry or cook. That's how you keep them apart.

Yangzom Brewing: But we are not so sure, only Mola sometimes scolds.

Sonam Brauen: Making Momos so lovingly makes me happy, but I also often cook Swiss home-style cooking or Dhal, Indian lentils - today I like to eat Indian. I have probably taken the best from all cultures.

If our book gives something to the reader, it is lived faith.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Are you a mediator between your mother's Tibetan world and her daughter's western world, Sonam?

Sonam Brauen: Maybe. It's mainly my memories that are in Yangzom's book. And they are definitely influenced by my experiences with Europe. Twenty years ago, I would have told our story very differently, more from a Tibetan point of view. Today I know both worlds, and that also influences the way I see things. I think I'm the most skeptical of us three.

Yangzom Brewing: But you are also tolerant.

Sonam Brauen: I strive to achieve the serenity of my mother.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Yangzom, in your book you write that for your grandmother, only the here and now is important. But your book is a reminder over long distances.

Yangzom Brauen: My grandmother did not want to join in at first, she asked: Why should I tell my past again? She also did not know many names anymore - because she thinks one should leave the dead alone and not summon by name. But then we explained why this book is important: because old Tibet can not be forgotten.

Sonam Brauen: That's when she said that if the readership in our book takes something with her, that's the religion she practices.

Recipe of Yangzom Brewing: Momos (stuffed dumplings)

90 pieces Dough: 500 g of flour, 275 ml of water; Meat Filling: 2 onions, 1 bouillon cube, 500 g mixed minced meat, 3 tbsp soy sauce, salt; flour for rolling

For the dough: Put the flour in a bowl and press in a bowl. Gradually pour the lukewarm water into the bowl and knead with your hands to a smooth and firm dough. Wrap in cling film and allow to rest for about 30 minutes at room temperature.

For the meat filling: Remove onions and finely dice. Dissolve bouillon cubes in 50 ml of hot water and add to the minced meat with the onions. Season with soy sauce and salt.

Roll out the dough in 3 portions on a lightly floured work surface thinly (about 2 mm thick), let it rest for 5 minutes and cut out about 90 taler (Ø 6 cm) out of it.

Add 1 tsp of filling to each taler. Brush the dough edges thinly with water and squeeze the dough with your fingers over the filling. With your fingertips, turn alternately to the left and right, creating a chain pattern.

Cut 4 cm wide strips from baking paper and place in a bamboo steamer. Momos in portions with some distance to each other put on the strips.

Place the bamboo steamer on a pot of boiling water and let the Momos steam for about 10 minutes. In addition: sweet chilli sauce

Ready in 1 hour per piece about 30 kcal, E 2 g, F 1 g, KH 4 g

Recipe of Yangzom Brewing: Tsampa Breakfast, East Tibetan Version

1 serving Salty butter tea: 2 tbsp Assam tea, 100 ml water, 1/2 tsp salt, 10 g butter, 80 ml milk; 5 tbsp, 10g soft butter, 2 tsp grated Gruyere cheese

For the butter tea: Put the tea leaves in the cold water, boil and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Drain tea.

Just try. That's delicious!

Add salt, butter and milk to the poured hot tea and keep warm.

Put the tsampa and soft butter in a small serving bowl and knead with your fingertips to a dough. Knead grated cheese.

Flatten the mixture in the bowl, add salted butter tea.

This is how it's eaten: first drink the tea from the bowl, then eat the damp tsampa layer. Add tea and continue drinking and eating until the bowl is empty.

Ready in 30 minutes Per portion about 30 kcal, E 12 g, F 23 g, KH 52 g