BharatSangraha

Bastar · Central Highlands & Forest Belt

Foodways

Bastar cooks out of the forest rather than out of a granary. The plateau grows paddy where it can and kodo and kutki millet where it cannot, but the calorie and cash margin comes from what the sal forest produces on its own schedule — mahua flower in March, chironji kernel and sal seed after it, bamboo shoot and mushrooms with the first rains, red ant broods in the hot months, salfi sap year-round from a tapped palm. The kitchen is boiled and soured rather than fried and spiced; oil is used sparingly because it has to be bought, and sourness is doing the work that chilli does in the plains below. A Bastar meal is legible as a calendar.

Primary cooking medium

Mahua oil and sal seed oil, both pressed at home from collected forest produceMustard oil, bought in the haat, used thinlyRamtil (niger seed) oil in the eastern villagesVery little dairy fat — the plateau is not cattle-dairy country

Dominant sour agents

Amchur and raw mango through the summerImli (tamarind), the dominant everyday sourFermented rice water (pej and its sour older form), which sours a dish and feeds the householdChapda — red weaver ants and their brood, which are sour from formic acid rather than from fruitBamboo shoot, fermented to a sharp pickleKoshim (kusum) and other wild sour fruit from the forest

Spice register

Low and short. Whole dried red chilli and garlic pounded on a stone, turmeric, a little coriander seed, and for most dishes nothing else. There is no garam masala tradition here and no onion-tomato base — the aroma comes from the ingredient and from the smoke. Set against the Chhattisgarh plains just north, Bastar is markedly less oily and less chilli-forward; set against the Telugu agency tracts to the south, it is far milder. What it has instead is a much wider vocabulary of sourness and of greens.

Staple grains and carbs

Rice, mostly coarse local paddy, eaten as much in fermented water form as dryKodo milletKutki (little millet)Ragi in the southern and eastern villagesMaize on penda plots

Preservation methods

Mahua flowers dried on the courtyard floor and stored for years — the household's savings accountBamboo shoot sliced, salted and fermented in a covered pot, then sun-driedChapda ants sun-dried and ground so the chutney can be made out of seasonDried fish from the Indravati and the tank fisheriesSun-dried leafy greens, gourd rings and mango slicesChironji and sal kernels stored in ash to keep insects out

Signature techniques

Pej fermentation

Rice is boiled with surplus water and the starchy liquid kept aside in a clay pot; drunk fresh it is a cooling gruel, and left a day or two it sours into a mildly alcoholic drink that carries the household through the field-work hours. The same pot is topped up rather than emptied, so the culture is continuous.

Also found in: Chhattisgarh Plains, Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands, Utkal

Bamboo-shoot souring

Young shoots are shaved thin, packed with salt in a sealed pot and left to ferment for days to weeks. The result is used as a souring agent in curries rather than as a vegetable, and the liquid drained off it is used the way a plains cook would use tamarind water.

Also found in: Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands, Mahakoshal & Gondwana, Chota Nagpur Plateau

Chapda harvesting and pounding

Weaver-ant nests are cut from sal and mango canopy with a hooked pole, shaken out over a cloth, and the adults and brood pounded on a stone with garlic, salt and green chilli. The sourness is formic acid, so the chutney needs no tamarind. Dried and ground, it keeps for months.

Also found in: Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands, Chota Nagpur Plateau, Utkal

Leaf-wrapped ember cooking

Fish, ant brood, mushrooms or minced meat are wrapped in sal or siyadi leaf, tied, and buried in the ash and embers of the hearth. Nothing is added but salt and a pounded chilli — the leaf supplies the aroma and the wrapping does the seasoning.

Also found in: Mahakoshal & Gondwana, Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands

Amat souring

A thin, almost broth-like preparation of seasonal vegetable or wild green in which tamarind or fermented shoot liquor is the whole seasoning, thickened lightly with rice flour rather than with lentil. It is the default midday dish and the reason a Bastar meal reads as sour before it reads as hot.

Also found in: Chhattisgarh Plains

Sap tapping and same-day drinking

The salfi palm is scored below the crown and the sap collected in a pot lashed to the trunk. It ferments in the pot within hours, is at its best the morning it is drawn, and is undrinkable by the second day — which is why it has never developed a market beyond the villages that own the trees.

Also found in: Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands

The foodway signature of Bastar — cooking medium, souring agents, spice register, staple grains and the techniques that define it. (6)