BharatSangraha

Chota Nagpur Plateau · Central Highlands & Forest Belt

Foodways

Rice, and then everything the sal forest supplies around it. The plateau's soil is thin and acidic and its water runs off, so a single paddy crop plus millet on the uplands is what the land gives — and the gap between harvests is filled by gathering. The kitchen is boiled, lightly oiled and short on spice; the strong flavours come from fermentation, from wild greens with real bitterness in them, and from mustard oil used raw. Handia, the rice beer, is not an indulgence at the edge of this foodway but part of its centre — it is offered to the ancestors, drunk at work parties, given to guests, and brewed in almost every village household by women, using a starter cake whose recipe is inherited.

Primary cooking medium

Mustard oil, the default cooking and finishing fatMahua oil and sal seed oil, home-pressed in the forest villagesRamtil (niger seed) oil, particularly in the Singhbhum and Odisha-facing villagesVery little ghee, and almost no dairy fat in everyday cooking

Dominant sour agents

Tamarind, the everyday sourAmchur and raw mango in summerFermented rice water, both as drink and as a souring liquidFermented bamboo shoot in the southern and eastern villagesWild sour fruit — kusum, jamun, karonda — used fresh and in chutneyRed weaver ants in the forest fringes, where the chutney is eaten as it is in Bastar and Mayurbhanj

Spice register

Restrained. Mustard seed, dry red chilli, garlic, turmeric and a little panch phoron on the Bengal-facing edge — and, on the Bihar-facing north, the roasted-gram and ajwain register of the plains creeping in. There is no onion-tomato masala base in the village kitchen. Against Magadh immediately north, this is a far less wheat-and-sattu cuisine and a far more fermented one; against Rarh to the east, it uses much less fish and much more forest green.

Staple grains and carbs

Rice, in a large number of local landraces, and its parboiled and fermented formsMarua (ragi, finger millet), the upland grainGondli (little millet) and other coarse milletsMaize on the upland plotsUrad, kulthi and other pulses on residual moisture

Preservation methods

Handia and its ranu starter cake, dried and stored for monthsMahua flowers dried on the floor and kept for yearsWild greens and gourd rings sun-dried for the lean monthsBamboo shoot salted and fermentedDried and smoked river fish and crabRugra dried after the flush, though it never keeps as well as the fresh

Signature techniques

Ranu starter and handia brewing

Boiled rice is spread to cool, mixed with a crumbled ranu tablet — a pressed and dried cake of twenty or more roots, barks and leaves gathered locally — and left in a covered earthen pot for two to four days. The ranu recipe is the household's, learnt from a mother or mother-in-law, and it is the reason two neighbours' handia taste different from identical rice.

Also found in: Rarh, Dooars & Terai, Brahmaputra Valley, Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands

Rice-batter griddling

Soaked rice is ground wet to a thin batter and poured on a hot tawa to make chilka roti — no fermentation, no lentil, and a crisp lace edge. The same batter thickened and fried in deep oil with chana dal makes dhuska. Both are breakfast, both are rice standing in for wheat.

Also found in: Magadh, Anga & Seemanchal

Wild-green cookery

Koinar (bauhinia leaf), sanai flower, munga, gandhari, chakor and a dozen others are boiled, squeezed and tempered in mustard oil with garlic and chilli. The bitterness is deliberate and is not cooked out — a saag that has lost its bitterness is considered spoilt.

Also found in: Rarh, Magadh, Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands

Ember and leaf roasting

Fish, crab, mushrooms or minced meat wrapped in sal leaf and buried in hearth ash. It is the standard method for anything gathered in small quantity, because it needs no oil and no pot.

Also found in: Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands, Bastar

Marua flour and mudde

Finger millet ground fine and either stirred into a stiff ball with boiling water or made into a thin roti. Marua is the upland insurance crop — it stores, it withstands a bad rain year, and it is what a village eats when the paddy has failed.

Also found in: Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands, Bagelkhand

Rugra harvesting

Puffball mushrooms are dug from sal root zones in the days after the first heavy thunderstorm, cleaned by rubbing rather than washing, and cooked plain with garlic. They cannot be cultivated, the flush lasts days, and the price in a Ranchi market during the flush regularly exceeds mutton.

Also found in: Rarh, Bastar

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