A Recipe for Manna from Lahaul

At Goya, celebrating home cooks and recipes have always been at the heart of our work. Through our series, #1000Kitchens, we document recipes from kitchens across the country, building a living library of heirloom recipes that have been in the family for 3 generations or more. In this edition, Shanti Devi and her nephew Manoj talk to Yoshita Sengupta about a dish made exclusively during two little-known festivals celebrated for centuries by the 70-odd members of the remote, snow-covered village in Lahaul.

This season’s stories are produced in partnership with the Samagata Foundation—a non-profit that champions meaningful projects.

In the peak of January winter, driving along the Chenab river through the Pir-Panjal range, we spot a picture-perfect hamlet down in a valley. Snow blankets the landscape for miles and the imposing mountains cast shadows over the dozen or so houses, which resemble the cover of a fairy-tale book. Amid these homes, a house with a bright red roof stands out against the sheet of white around it. That unique house happens to be our destination.

We veer off the main road, down towards the Pattan Valley, locally called the Chandra-Bhaga Valley, and reach Rashil village, braving several feet of snow.

Inside the home of our host family, we are first struck by the sense of warmth, from the tandoor that occupies the central spot in the living area (a common feature of houses in the valley) and from the women huddled around the tandoor, knitting Lahauli socks. Incidentally, both the metal tandoor and the knitting technique (the socks received a Geographical Indication tag in 2021) that are now unique to Lahaul were introduced to the locals by German Moravian missionaries in the 19th century.

Our host is Shanti Devi, who runs a homestay with her nephew, Manoj, on Airbnb. The family also engaged in commercial farming, selling everything from lettuce to purple cabbage.

As we thaw, the otherwise uninhibited yet initially awkward Shanti Devi begins the preparation for manna — a neer dosa-like crepe made solely with locally grown buckwheat and kala jeera found in the valley’s forest. This simple dish is enjoyed with ghee made from the milk of livestock reared by each household, indicating that its history likely dates back centuries, not decades.

“Manna is a traditional Lahauli dish, mostly made here. During every festival, we make manna with ghee. In our community, a festival is incomplete,” she says with a smile. “"We make it during the festivals of Halda and Fagli.”

Eaten only during these two indigenous festivals, manna holds cultural significance for the 15-odd households in Rashil and an equal number of households in the neighbouring villages of Rapay and Jobran. The residents of these three villages on the left bank of the Chenab form a unique community that is Tibetan Buddhist by birth but worships Shiv and considers Vasuki (serpent king, popularly depicted coiled around Shiv’s neck) as their kul-devata (clan deity).

On the first full moon after the new year (January 13-14), the community celebrates Halda/Khogla, which Shanti’s 35-year-old nephew Puneet, better known by his second name Manoj, describes as a festival of lights, the community’s version of Diwali. While Manna is prepared for Khogla as well, its presence on the plate becomes non-negotiable for Fagli/Kuns that begins two days before the new moon after Khogla and goes on for five days. “Kuns is one of our most important festivals. Everybody in the village eats manna with ghee on the third day,” he says.

While Shanti is more reticent, Manoj is eager to share stories and details about his community and culture. Through him, we learn about the rituals conducted on each day of the festival. What we also start to sense, however, is a desire to tightly hold on to his traditions; a drive that likely stems from some concerns.

A quick scroll of his social media lands us on images of the mesmerising festivities and posts that go from expressing gratitude towards and pride in his community’s ethos and deities, to philosophical ruminations on culture, the need to live and preserve what is left of it.

Manoj goes on to explain the community’s origins and heritage skillfully interspersing the larger context of the local economy, infrastructure and geography. His concerns, even without him stating them, find validation when we begin to contextualise the elaborate traditions exclusive to his community with the fact that his village of fewer than 70 people is in the least populous and only district in the country with a consistently declining population. Manoj shares his concerns “With most younger members of the families having migrated to Kullu or other bigger cities, some elders in the village are often not certain if their children will follow traditions in their entirety. Over time, for example, some practices or important steps from elaborate rituals start to get skipped.”

The case with traditional recipes can be similar, he admits. He shares a recent anecdote where he received requests to carry manna from some members of his community settled in Kullu when they found out about his travel plans. Do they not know how to make it? “It’s a 2-ingredient dish. It cannot be that difficult. Either they don’t know how to make it or they don’t try. It’s mostly the older women in the village who make it,” he says. “Also, some of the relatively younger women from communities outside who marry into the village perhaps try learning how to make it, but not all of them manage to get it right,” he adds as a more measured afterthought. If they try and struggle, then perhaps it isn’t that simple a dish, we ask, prompting further thought. “Manna needs to be of a certain shape, thickness and cooked at a specifically maintained temperature. And it’s made only once or twice a year, so there’s no continuous practice,” he acknowledges.

Manna possibly retains its place in the cooking repertoire owing to its connection with Kuns. We ask Manoj if he remembers dishes he ate as a child, which are now rarely eaten. What could explain their fading popularity? “Our traditional food is very basic and typically made with what historically grows in the valley. The cropping has evolved, and a lot more is grown in the valley. Several other ingredients are also easily accessible, and with exposure to food from outside, perhaps the simpler dishes are no longer as appealing.”

While Manoj voices his concerns, he also admits that the community is starting to acknowledge the importance of their traditions and returning to their roots. “Our villages have beliefs and practices that some were too embarrassed to associate with, some thought were too conservative and some dismissed as superstitions. A few inexplicable incidents that saved the village while the rest of the valley suffered and (dosh) personal troubles faced by non-followers/ believers made people reconsider their views about our faith,” Manoj claims. “They are starting to acknowledge that we are onto something, “ he says.

Swiftly moving away from the mystical and the inexplicable, we focus our attention on Shanti who expertly peels off soft, thin, perfectly round mannas from the pan with her bare hands. In between giggles that belie her age, she gives us near monosyllabic responses to our questions about manna. We start to sense that manna perhaps isn’t very high up in her list of favourite dishes. When we double down on our hunch and ask if manna isn’t her most preferred dish, her coy response is, “I like chatpata (piquant/ spicy) food.”

Shanti’s response, perhaps in some way, confirms the hypothesis that simpler traditional dishes are now less appealing. “There’s no formal teaching of traditional recipes, at least there wasn’t in my case,” she says, adding that she grew up observing techniques and processes employed in the kitchen by the women in her family. After her marriage in 1997, she observed bua-ji (husband’s paternal aunt) make manna for decades. “She (bua-ji) chose to be the only person to make mannas in the house. Both my mother-in-law and I wouldn’t make it. One particular year, she decided she had done enough and I started making them. It was just the way it was,” she says.

Earlier, an iron tawa was used. Now, they sometimes go with non-stick cookware. Manna is usually eaten with ghee, sometimes with rajma or mutton by the side.

Favourite or not, when the time was right, Shanti did put decades of observed learning into practice and perfected the skill to keep the tradition of manna alive. She does not assume that someone wouldn’t do the same after her. Perhaps the 51-year-old matriarch, in all her wisdom, believes that her people and traditions endured the toughest living conditions, with far lesser means for centuries before her, and there is no reason to doubt that they cannot survive in the centuries to follow.

Come to think of it, all of Manoj’s efforts to hold on to and promote the culture only reinforce Shanti’s belief; traditions find a way to survive in one form or another.

We choose to find as much comfort in this thought as we do in the first bite of the soft manna that we douse in a generous portion of warm ghee.

Notes:

The perfect manna is said to be the one that does not brown when cooking. It’s crucial, therefore, to maintain the cooking temperature and ensure the pan never overheats.
Manna is traditionally served with ghee made the traditional way with fermented and churned milk fat. A simple, hearty mutton stew is also often served with manna and ghee.
The kala jeera is only found growing in the Himalayan and Pir-Panjal forests between June and September. You can find the ingredients sold by boutique sellers on e-commerce platforms.

SHANTI DEVI’S MANNA RECIPE

Ingredients

Fine buckwheat flour
1 tsp Himalayan kala jeera (black cumin, not Nigella seeds/kalonji)
Salt to taste
400-500 ml water

Method

Take water in a large mixing bowl and add a teaspoon of kala jeera and salt.
Start by adding a fistful of buckwheat flour to the bowl while stirring the mixture.
Keep adding buckwheat flour and stirring it until you reach a smooth, flowy mixture with a consistency similar to a pancake, pakoda or a slightly watery dosa batter.
If the batter is too thick, add more water.
Taste and adjust the salt.
Place a flat, preferably non-stick or pre-seasoned, pan placed on the lowest possible flame ensuring it does not heat up too much.
Use a regular tablespoon or the smallest available serving spoon and start to pour the batter on the pan and spread it out in circular motion to form a thin layer before adding the next spoonful of batter. Continue with this process until the entire surface of the pan is covered in a thin, uniform layer.
When the batter dries out and tiny holes or peeled-skin like bubble marks appear on the manna, carefully lift it off the pan [traditionally, lifted off with fingers, you can use a silicon or a spatula with a blunt edge]. Fold the manna twice over to resemble a neer dosa/ triangle.
Use the rest of the batter the same way.

Words by Yoshita Sengupta. Photos by Terrence Manne. Art by Ariel Wills.
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