Among the high-altitude Sherpas, there is no separation into starter, main course, and dessert. The meal is organized around a nourishing and warm base — barley tsampa or rice — accompanied by lentil dal, village potatoes, and dried meat pieces. Everything is punctuated by bowls of salted butter tea (po cha) that are endlessly refilled from morning to evening. The food is dense, fatty, and lukewarm: it must sustain the body in the cold and thin air of the high valleys.

Cornerstone of the Sherpa table: it is incorporated into beaten tea (po cha), used to coat tsampa, and rubbed on potatoes. Fatty, salty, slightly sour when aged, it is what transforms barley flour or boiled potato into high-altitude fuel.