(First published in Eastern Star, Axis Bank in 2006. Published in Facebook sometime in October 2013)
Most Indians who are not familiar with Bihar have not heard of Litti. But those who are (familiar, I mean) will probably swear by it.
For years I have heard this term being mentioned by Bihar returned families, and had not had a chance to encounter the said item in person.
Till I got posted as the head of my bank’s main branch at Jamshedpur in June 2005 that is.
On a an early winter’s evening, we were attending a marriage reception at the Jubilee Park. I quite forget who was marrying whom…I remember only that it was a mixed affair…a Gujarati with a Punjabi or vice versa.
Whatever was the case, the actual marriage ceremony had been over the day before but a mock ceremony was being recreated and enacted , as is common now a days with mixed marriages, for the benefit of the relatives of one or the other side of the in laws .
The bridegrooms entourage – the Baaratis – was far too busy waltzing the last half kilometer of the way to the reception venue with the tail end being brought up by the bridegroom dressed like a Maharajah and sitting regally on a liveried horse, amid blaring music and much bursting of crackers .
And in their highly inebriated state, the Baaratis took about two and a half hours to complete the journey of that half kilometer.
The girl’s side was following close behind the grooms but they could not, by virtue of protocol, enter the arena before the groom.
In the meantime the other invited guests like us who were neither a part of the official entourage of the bride nor of the groom , who had arrived punctually at 9.00 pm, as per the letter of invitation, waited ….and waited…and waited…….with growing impatience and growling stomachs.
For the uninitiated, Jubilee Park is a huge sprawling area at the centre of Jamshedpur Steel City with a lake, a mini zoo, a Moghul Garden, a flower nursery, and an amusement park thrown in for good measure. Parts of it are also rented out for marriage functions and such.
We were in the amusement park area which was dotted by slips, swings, miniature boating facilities and the marriage reception was organized all around them. Being winter, the organizers had also placed a good number of charcoal burners at strategic locations where people could warm their hands and bodies.
The caterers had very wisely arranged for the buffet dinner to be thrown open only after arrival of the Baraat, as per protocol. Until then the congregation had to satisfy themselves from the auxiliary counters dotting the place serving snacks and mocktails and soups. It is to these counters that we gravitated, after it became clear even after eleven pm that the Baraat would probably take some more time to reach the venue.
On offer were many types of very spicy vegetarian salads – ‘Chaats’ which I hate (not for dinner ..Ugh!!),Veg noodles with tomato sauce served on Saal leaf dishes, Paneer Tikka and assorted other and equally loathsome purely vegetarian stuff. Definitely not prescribed for out of doors dinner on a chilly evening.
Finally, when we were at the point of near despair, did I discover the counter offering some brownish round objects, the size of gulab jamuns or rasgoolas, , vaguely resembling balls of half burnt chapattis , being cooked on an open charcoal grate oven and being served piping hot .
The queue in front of it was longish which indicated its popularity and I would not have headed there had it not been for the curiosity, which admittedly, got the better of me despite the hunger pangs.
What I got was a few brown balls straight off from the oven and dipped for a second or two into a bowl of clarified butter (‘ghee’ ) and served on a Saal leaf dish with a lot of chopped onions, a variant of potato salad (called ‘chokha’) and a pungent mango pickle on the side.
The stuff tasted so good that I went back for a second helping ( and eventually a third !! ) and I dare say this completed my dinner, as the rest of the stuff including the so called main dinner when it was finally thrown open to the public turned out also to be a very dull and very vegetarian affair. And anyway by this time I was full and had become a firm Litti fan.
Litti is basically a sort of thick ball of roti having salted and spicy filling whose main ingredient is sattu – a mixture of ground pulses and cereals with some spices and herbs…
It is first roasted over a grate ( in a similar manner like chapattis ) and hot dipped in clarified butter or ‘ghee’ before serving .The hot stuffed ball soaks up the ghee like blotting paper. Hence you are advised to be careful in case you suffer from acidity problems…
Another variant of litti is sweet litti, which is nothing but roti of wheat flour having layers of sugar inside and fried with liberal sprinkling of ghee.
The word Litti is originally derived from the Maithili word Litt ,meaning smearing. The dish probably originated in the paddy fields of Chhapra over a hundred years ago where hungry farmers and field workers made a rough ball of ground wheat ( atta) and sattu and roasted it over a twig fire in order to have a quick and filling snack.
It has now become more refined and wide spread through the length and breadth of Bihar. And , upon closer scrutiny, I found one day that small litties were actually being made and sold by the roadside next to the paan shop near my office at Voltas House in Bishtupur also. Needless to say, there has been no looking back ever since …
Later, I heard of people throwing outdoor “Litti Parties” – an integral part of winter festivities in Bihar, and also in parts of Jharkhand.
While browsing the Net one day I found that there were NRIs from Bihar located in far flung USA and UK who were also throwing Litti parties in New York and London !!
And from those distant shores they were also sending in revised recipes of littis cooked in microwave ovens !!
Well .. good for them and good for us – the foodies – But I have been looking for litti in Mumbai among all the Pav-Bhaji and Vada-Pav stalls….for the last several years without any success …
I do hope some kind friend would take the hint and take up the challenge. I await the invitation.
Those interested in the recipe may look at Patnadaily.com
AUTHORS NOTE
This article was written in 2006, while I was working in Axis Bank , Main Branch, Jamshedpur, in response to a desperate last minute plea from a dear colleague of mine who was trying to meet his deadline for publication of Eastern Star, the e-magazine of Axis Bank Eastern Zone, Kolkata. Subsequently I published it in Facebook in October 2013 when I was still living in Mumbai.
After reading this in Facebook, a dear (now departed, alas ) friend of my wife’s from her Benares days invited us to her home in Andheri for an exclusive Litti Party one Sunday evening, to the accompaniment of excellent Taliskar Single Malt Scotch whiskey laid on by her husband Arvind, also a dear friend of ours. It was the best Litti Party ever.
Fifty Shades of Random Ramblings 