
Tribal ingredients like Mahua, Ber powder, Hendua from Jharkhand
It’s not every day that you get to see tribal cuisines being showcased in the forefront of modern dining experiences and breaking the norm and celebrating the rich culinary heritage from the tribes of Jharkhand, Chef Nishant Choubey and Dr Manisha Oraon (who works around empowering via her agro-tourism project and also someone who has documented the culinary repertoire of few of the tribes), brought local flavours of the state tribes at Roseate House, New Delhi to the table giving us a taste of what regional, seasonal and sustainable eating is all about.

Manisha is known for her expertise in using local herbs, seasonal flowers and ingredients, along with incorporating tribal techniques like steaming in leaves and bamboo stems in her cooking. She travelled to Delhi with all her favourites along ingredinets and not to miss the 50kg of sal leaves, as she made sure that food was served and steamed in those leaves.

The experience started with Roselle Mojito along with side of assorted chutneys Kudrum ,Hendua , Beng saag ( brahmi ) and Ragi papad and mahua flowers. Manisha went ahead to explain how millet is a part of their daily diet and that plating this ethnic fare with a contemporary touch that saw all local ingredient’s from herbs to and flowers was actually fun. Next on the plate was the iconic GI-tagged red ant chutney or as locally known as Demta paired with chilka roti. This pickled version of the chutney was absolutely addictive.
Due to the heavy tribal influence, the cuisine from Jharkhand sees much use of flowers, roots, shoots and more that they forage from their surroundings and one such dish was Maand jhor with Sanai-phool Alu chokha with starchy rice water tempered with some cumin etc, served with chokha mashed with sunhemp flowers. Next on them menu was Katnausi, a ritualistic dish mostly served in marriages that saw black chana cooked with chicken liver and Chef Nishant took it a notch higher by topping it with a half-fried egg.

The main course saw Khasi chawal- meat and meat offals cooked in spicy gravy and served along with Red rice from the state ( don’t confuse it with the one from Kerala) that had be eaten with your hand. Ending on sweet note there was mahua kheer and Mahua ke laddoo. This pop-up surely brought indigenous flavours into limelight