Momo, the dumpling Kathmandu made its own

For centuries, Kathmandu's richest trade ran north. Newar merchant families from Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur kept houses and shops in Lhasa, trading cloth, metalwork and grain for wool, salt and gold over the passes at Kuti and Kerung. Men spent years in Tibet and came home with Tibetan habits, words and recipes. The usual telling is that the momo came back with them. Newars call it mamacha, and the Newar version was filled with buffalo meat, the meat Newar families ate, rather than the yak and mutton of Tibet.

A second wave came after 1959, when thousands of Tibetans fled into Nepal. Many settled around Boudhanath and Jawalakhel in the Kathmandu Valley and in camps near Pokhara. They opened small kitchens selling momo and thukpa, the Tibetan noodle soup, and Kathmandu's appetite for both grew from there. Today momo is sold from the smallest street stall in Asan to hotel restaurants, and there is hardly a street in the valley without a steamer at the front of a shop.

In Kathmandu the classic momo is buff. Buffalo meat is minced with onion, garlic, ginger, fresh coriander and a little oil or fat so the filling stays juicy, then spiced with cumin, coriander seed and sometimes timur, a citrusy pepper from the hills. Cows are sacred in Hindu Nepal and their slaughter is illegal, so beef momo is not on the menu; buff is the city's red meat.

Chicken momo is now just as common, and pork momo has a following too. Vegetable momo is usually filled with cabbage, onion and carrot, sometimes with paneer or soybean. In the mountains, lodges make potato and cheese momo, and some Sherpa and Thakali kitchens make their own versions with yak cheese or buckwheat. Sadeko momo, a newer style, comes tossed in a mix of oil, chilli, onion and lemon after steaming.

The dough is plain wheat flour and water, rolled thin and pleated by hand into a round purse or a half-moon. Watch a momo shop at lunchtime and you will see two or three people folding without looking, faster than you can count.

Momo is also family food. On a holiday or a Saturday afternoon, many Kathmandu households make momo together. One person minces and mixes the filling, someone rolls the wrappers, and everyone else sits around a tray folding, with children learning by making lopsided ones that still go in the steamer. The steamer, a stack of aluminium trays with holes, sits on a gas ring in the kitchen, and the first batch is eaten standing up before the second is ready.

Homes make their own achar the same afternoon, roasting tomatoes on the flame and pounding them with sesame in a stone mortar. If a Nepali friend invites you to a momo afternoon, go, and expect to be put to work folding. It is one of the easiest ways into a Kathmandu home, and you will leave knowing how to pleat a momo better than any cooking class teaches.

A plate is usually ten pieces, and the first choice is how you want them cooked. The table shows the styles you will find on most menus in Kathmandu and Pokhara.

Most shops also sell thukpa, the Tibetan noodle soup, and some Tibetan kitchens make shapale, a fried bread pie filled with spiced meat. If you are with friends, order two or three styles and share them; that is how most Kathmandu tables do it, and it is the quickest way to find the style you like. Momo are made to order or in batches through the day, so expect a wait of 10 to 20 minutes in a busy shop.

Ask a Kathmandu momo lover what makes a good momo shop and the answer is usually the achar. The classic dip is made from tomatoes roasted over a flame, ground with toasted sesame seeds, garlic, green or dried chilli, fresh coriander and a pinch of timur, the Nepali relative of Sichuan pepper that numbs the tongue slightly. Some shops add roasted soybeans for body, and many keep a second, hotter chilli sauce on the table.

Jhol achar, the thin soupy version poured over the momo, has become so popular that many shops now serve it as standard. Every kitchen guards its own balance of sesame, tomato and heat, and regulars will cross town for the one they like. If you are not used to chilli, ask for the achar on the side and try it before you pour.

Momo is a snack first, eaten at khaja time in the afternoon, after work, or with friends late in the evening. In local momo shops a plate of buff or chicken momo costs a few hundred rupees; in tourist restaurants in Thamel and Lakeside, expect two to three times as much. The cheap places are often the best, as long as they are busy.

For Tibetan-style momo and thukpa, the lanes around Boudhanath and the Tibetan settlement at Jawalakhel in Patan are where Tibetan families cook. For buff momo the Newar way, the old city around Asan, Indra Chowk and the squares of Patan and Bhaktapur have small shops where the steamers start in the late morning. A guided food walk lets you try several in an afternoon without guessing.

• Choose a shop with a queue and steam coming off the stack; momo should arrive hot.
• Say buff, chicken or veg, then steamed, kothey or jhol; the staff will understand.
• Eat with your fingers or a fork; dip, do not soak, unless you ordered jhol.
• Ask for less chilli with mirchi kam, if you need to.
• Pay at the counter on the way out; tipping in local shops is not expected.

Momo travelled on from Nepal. It is daily food in Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan, a street snack in Delhi and across north India, and Nepali restaurants have taken it to cities from London to Sydney. In many of those places it is sold as a Nepali dish, which says a lot about how completely Kathmandu adopted it.

On the trekking trails, momo appears on lodge menus from Lukla to Manang, and hand-folded potato momo after a cold day's walk is one of the small pleasures of a teahouse. Above Namche we still suggest the vegetable or potato version: meat in the Khumbu is carried up from below and is rarely fresh. In the valley, though, eat buff momo at least once. It is the taste most Kathmandu people miss first when they live abroad.