Slice of Bihar

While growing up, home chef Chandana Nandkeolyar Advani remembers frequenting Pintu’s, a small hole-in-the-wall joint located on Patna’s station road. The eatery served delectable chicken cutlets, a taste that Chandana still remembers and has included in her pop-up on lost recipes of Bihar. Organised by Authenticook, this event at Neel introduced the patrons to the state’s cuisine that’s often confused with the neighbouring state’s dishes.

Talking about her thought process behind putting together the menu, Chandana says, “When I was curating the menu, I decided to include dishes that will give a glimpse of our culinary history. Each dish has different spices that differ in taste and flavour from the other.” The appetisers included bhabhra (green gram pancakes), mutton goli (meat balls), Pintu’s chicken cutlets and litti-chokha. Talking about the latter, Chandana explains that the litti, a fried dough ball, is served with chokha, which is the accompaniment. “Apart from the common aloo ka chokha, there’s also baingan chokha and tomato chokha which are roasted and hand pounded with spices. The fried dough balls are broken by hand and topped with ghee and then dipped in the chokhas and savoured.”

For the main course, the dishes included aloo parwal bhujiya, dehati meat, taash and sarson waali machli, a variation of the Bengali mustard gravy. “Sarson wali machli is very different from shorshe maach you get in West Bengal. It’s similar in taste though the ingredients differ. Our version doesn’t have any tomatoes or ginger and we don’t add onion in it. It’s made with green chilli paste, garlic paste and mustard paste. The consistency is very thin so when you pour it over rice, it should flow,” she explains. And flavour of the green chilli paste in the dish does stand out. Breads such as Matar Kachori, Tikona Paratha, Dhooska were also served with the main course.

Staying true to her roots and to maintain the authenticity of the cuisine, Chandana has stayed away from any fusion experiment. “I’ve seen my great-grandmother and grandmother make them, and the recipes have been passed down the generations. A lot of people experiment with the cooking techniques, but I haven’t modified any dish. I make it just the way my nani used to cook,” she added.

But the showstoppers of the event were the desserts and Chandana had chosen Parwal Ki Mithai, Malpua made with bananas and Pedakiya. Chandana  revealed the process of making Parwal Ki Mithai, saying, “Once the skin of the parwal is removed. it  is the boiled in water and later soaked in chachni.” But it’s not as easy as it sounds. “It’s a very temperamental dish. One wrong step can spoil the dish,” she adds.