दिल्ली की रसोई में पहाड़ का स्वाद, सीधे पहाड़ की दुकानों से।
Delhi has a market for almost everything, but the things a Pahadi kitchen runs on are hard to find in it. You can buy rajma and ghee on any street; gahat, bhatt, jakhiya, jambu and a jar of garlic pisyu loon are another matter, and the ones that turn up are rarely from the hills.
This site lists family shops in Kumaon and Garhwal that make and pack these things themselves. Your order goes straight to the shop, which packs it and hands it to the courier, so what reaches your flat in Delhi is what that household sells to its own neighbours. Cash on delivery is available where the shop offers it, and each product page tells you before you order.
In the hills, Makar Sankranti is Ghughutiya, or Uttarayani: families knead flour with jaggery, fry it into little ghughute shapes, and string them into garlands for the children, who call the crows the next morning. In Delhi, hill communities hold Uttarayani melas around the same time, with music, stalls and food from home. If you are frying ghughute in a Delhi kitchen this January, hill ghee and jaggery sweets are on these shelves.
Delhi summers melt ghee to a clear liquid and winters set it hard and grainy. Both are normal, and neither harms it; just keep the jar off the kitchen counter next to the stove. In the dust of April and May, keep spice and loon jars tightly closed, and in the humid weeks of the monsoon move opened flour to the fridge.