BharatSangraha

Marathwada · Deccan Inland Plateau

Foodways

Two kitchens share a pantry here. The Marathi village kitchen is built on jowar, groundnut, sesame and dry coconut, and its signature is kala masala — a masala roasted dark, almost to the edge of burning, so the dish arrives black rather than red. The Deccani Muslim kitchen of the towns is built on mutton, wheat bread and a slow braise, and it is closer to Hyderabad's than to anything in western Maharashtra. Neither is sweet. Where the Desh kitchen a hundred kilometres west finishes a masala with jaggery and calls it goda, Marathwada finishes with more chilli and more roasted coconut, and the two masalas are the fastest way to tell a Pune kitchen from a Beed one.

Primary cooking medium

Groundnut oil — the default, and the region's own oilseedSafflower (karadi) oil in the older rural kitchenMutton fat, deliberately left floating on the rassa rather than skimmedGhee, reserved for sweets, festival food and the Sikh langar at Nanded

Dominant sour agents

Tamarind — the primary sour, used in both kitchensKokum in a few coastal-facing households, but far less than in the KonkanButtermilk and soured curd, especially in kadhi and ambilRaw mango and amchur through the summer monthsLime, in the Deccani town kitchen more than the village one

Spice register

Dark, dry-roasted and hot, with the heat coming from quantity of red chilli rather than from a single sharp variety. The aromatic floor is dry coconut, sesame, poppy seed, black stone flower (dagad phool) and coriander seed, all roasted separately until they take colour. Set against its neighbours — Desh goda masala is sweeter and gentler, Kolhapuri is redder and leans on garlic and Byadgi chilli, Vidarbha's saoji is oilier and more peppery — Marathwada's is the blackest and the most sesame-forward. The Deccani town kitchen sits apart from all of them, using whole spice, fried onion and yoghurt rather than a ground masala.

Staple grains and carbs

Jowar (sorghum) — the staple grain, eaten as hand-patted bhakri at both mealsBajra in the driest western talukas and through the cold monthsWheat, mainly as a rabi crop and in the town kitchen as naan and phulkaRice, historically a festival grain here rather than a daily oneTur, gram, moong and urad as the pulse rotation on the same black soil

Preservation methods

Sandge and kurdai — sun-dried dumplings of urad or wheat starch, fried through the dry monthsMetkut, a stored powder of roasted gram, wheat and spices, eaten with rice and gheeJowar and bajra stored in kanagi, mud-plastered grain bins built inside the house wallWhole red chilli, tamarind and dry coconut bought once a year and ground into masala in AprilMango, lime and green chilli pickled in groundnut oil with a heavy mustard-fenugreek tempering

Signature techniques

Kala masala roasting

Dry coconut, sesame, poppy seed, coriander, dagad phool and a cassia-clove group are roasted separately, each to its own point, and the coconut is taken almost to burnt. The blackness is the coconut's; the fragrance is the stone flower's. Because it is roasted rather than fried, the finished masala keeps for a year in a tin, which is the point — it is made once, in the dry heat of April, for the whole year.

Also found in: Bayaluseeme, Kalyana Karnataka

Bhakri patting

Jowar flour has no gluten, so the dough cannot be rolled. It is patted out on the palm and the working surface with wetted fingers, turning constantly, then cooked on a tawa and finished directly on the coals so it puffs. The skill is entirely in the hand, and it is one of the few Indian breads a rolling pin cannot make.

Also found in: Bayaluseeme, Vidarbha, Nimar

Naan qalia braise

Mutton on the bone is browned with whole spice and fried onion, then braised slowly with yoghurt and a restrained ground masala until the fat separates and floats clear. It is a Deccani method — thin, red-brown, whole-spice-led — and it is served against a leavened naan baked on the wall of a tandoor rather than against bhakri, which is why it reads as town food.

Also found in: Telangana, Kalyana Karnataka

Hurda roasting

Jowar ears are cut while the grain is still soft and milky, roasted whole over a fire of their own stalks in the field, then rubbed between the palms so the husk blows off and the green grain stays. It works only for about three weeks per crop, and it cannot be moved off the farm — which is why it is a social occasion rather than a dish.

Also found in: Nimar, Bayaluseeme

Thecha and kharda pounding

Green chilli, garlic and coarse salt are pounded on stone with roasted groundnut. Pounding, rather than grinding, keeps the chilli's cell walls partly intact so the heat arrives in bursts instead of evenly — the texture is the recipe. Kharda is the coarser, oilier version.

Also found in: Nimar, Vidarbha

Ambil souring

Jowar or bajra flour is cooked to a thin gruel, then left with buttermilk overnight so it sours. Drunk cold through the hot months, it is a lactic-fermented electrolyte drink that predates the phrase by some centuries.

Also found in: Bayaluseeme, Telangana

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