Anga & Seemanchal · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
This is where the eastern plain's kitchen changes hands. Coming from the west, the sattu-and-litti belt thins out; coming from the east, chhena sweets, panch phoran, mustard-heavy fish curries, sun-dried and fermented fish, and a much larger place for rice all arrive. The region is also the country's makhana bowl along with Mithila, and its own particular objects are the Katarni rice and its chura, the Zardalu mango, and the fermented-fish preparations of the Surjapuri belt that have no equivalent anywhere further west.
Primary cooking medium
Dominant sour agents
Spice register
Panch phoran bloomed in mustard oil, with green chilli, ginger and turmeric — and, moving east, a lighter hand still, with sugar entering savoury cooking as it does in Bengal. Whole mustard paste appears in the fish curries of the Katihar and Kishanganj side and does not appear at all fifty kilometres west.
Staple grains and carbs
Preservation methods
Signature techniques
Silkworms are reared outdoors on asan and arjun trees in the forests of Jharkhand and the southern hills, and the cocoons are brought to Bhagalpur to be boiled, reeled and woven. Where a pierced cocoon cannot be reeled it is spun into ghicha yarn, which gives the cloth its characteristic slub. The whole chain crosses a state boundary and a forest-to-town divide in a single week.
Also found in: Chota Nagpur Plateau, Bastar
Seeds collected by divers from pond beds, dried, graded, roasted and struck with a wooden mallet while still scalding so the kernel bursts free. Purnia and Katihar now rival Mithila in output.
Also found in: Mithilanchal
Small fish salted and sun-dried, or packed into sealed earthen jars to ferment into a pungent paste used in small quantities as a seasoning. Common in the Surjapuri and Bengali-speaking belt, unknown in the Hindi-speaking districts an hour to the west — the clearest food boundary in the region.
Also found in: Bengal Delta, Brahmaputra Valley
Milk split with acid, the curd drained and worked while warm into sweets. The technique arrives from Bengal and stops around Bhagalpur — west of it, sweets are made from khoya, which is milk reduced rather than split.
Also found in: Bengal Delta, Rarh
Sesame and jaggery beaten with wooden mallets on stone through the cold months — a winter industry shared with Gaya, and made here in a slightly coarser style.
Also found in: Magadh
The foodway signature of Anga & Seemanchal — cooking medium, souring agents, spice register, staple grains and the techniques that define it. (5)