Rohilkhand & Katehar · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
Two kitchens layered on one plain. Underneath is a Katehari wheat, cane and dairy foodway indistinguishable from the Doab's. Over it sits the Rohilla kitchen — Afghan in its instincts, meat-forward, whole-spice, drier and less perfumed than Awadh's, and refined at Rampur into a court cuisine that is its own school rather than a branch of Lucknow's. In the terai, a third foodway again: river fish, rice, wild greens and pig, cooked by Tharu households who share almost nothing with either.
Primary cooking medium
Dominant sour agents
Spice register
Whole spice used boldly, in the Afghan manner — black cardamom, cinnamon, clove and coriander seed left visible in the dish rather than infused and removed. Rampur adds saffron, ginger and dried fruit for its court dishes but stops well short of Awadh's kewra and rose. The everyday plain kitchen is plainer still: turmeric, chilli, coriander and a lot of asafoetida.
Staple grains and carbs
Preservation methods
Signature techniques
Meat is cooked in yoghurt and browned onion until the gravy reduces to the point where it pulls into a thread off a spoon — the taar. The consistency, not the spicing, is what the dish is judged on, and it is the signature test of a Rampuri cook.
Also found in: Awadh
Turnip and meat sealed in a pot and cooked overnight — shab, the night — so the turnip absorbs the meat and loses its own texture completely. A dish Rampur shares with Kashmir and with nowhere in between, a direct trace of the two courts' connection.
Also found in: Kashmir Valley
Meat cooked with whole spices and no ground masala at all, so the gravy stays thin and clear and the aroma comes from the spices left in the pot. The Afghan end of the region's cooking, and the plainest good thing in it.
Also found in: Deccan Plateau, Punjab Doabs
Cane crushed at the village kolhu and boiled down in open pans through the winter night. Rohilkhand runs alongside the Doab as India's densest cane belt.
Also found in: Antarved Doab, Haryana Bangar & Bagar
River fish split, salted and hung over a slow wood fire in Tharu households, then stored for the flood months when fishing is impossible. Related to eastern and Nepali terai practice, not to anything in the plain below.
Also found in: Mithilanchal
The foodway signature of Rohilkhand & Katehar — cooking medium, souring agents, spice register, staple grains and the techniques that define it. (5)