Magh Bihu: A Culinary Guide To Assam's Harvest Festival

Magh Bihu is a time of community and celebration, with plenty of food, including pitha, laru, sandoh and mah-korai.

Since the beginning of agriculture, humans have been celebrating the harvest. Be it the rice harvest festival in Indonesia, the mooncake festival in China, the yam festival in Ghana or our own desi Pongal, Lohri, and Magh Bihu in Assam.

As the sun starts shifting from the south to the north during the Uttarayana, Assamese people gear up for the harvest celebration. When January arrives, they start preparing for the grand festivities and merrymaking. As the name Bhogali suggests, this festival is centred around food (Bhogali comes from the word bhog, which means feast or enjoyment). After a year of toiling in the fields under the sun and in the rain, people indulge themselves by eating good food and securing their hearths.

The festival of Magh Bihu is celebrated over two days. The first day or the eve is called uruka. On uruka, people organise community feasts. On this evening, people from a locality gather and erect makeshift houses known as bhelaghar and a stack known as meiji. The whole night, people eat around campfires and sleep in the bhelaghar. On the next morning on Magh Bihu, people fire the meiji and pray for a safe hearth and a blissful year. After the rituals, jolpan and other items made exclusively for the festival are served.

Black gram dal cooked with yam and mustard leaves

The Uruka Feast

Perhaps the biggest attraction of Magh Bihu is the feast on the eve of uruka. The uruka feast is a big celebration and every businessman and woman in Assam aims to sell their produce for it. Be it vegetable growers or fishermen or livestock farmers, the most significant chunk of their produce is sold for uruka. Assam’s markets are flooded with the juiciest and fresh produce and freshwater fish. The markets on uruka are a feast for the eyes.

Swapnali Dutta from Dhemaji shares: “When we were kids, the uruka feast was inundated with fish and vegetables. We would erect the bhelaghar and prepare for the feasts for weeks. All the children of our locality would gather and make a menu. There would be song, dance, and peals of laughter as our mothers cooked the feast, and our fathers gathered around the campfire, talking, and roasting potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes. They would also roast sunga pitha and enjoy them hot. Those days are now remnants of the past.”

Traditionally, the uruka feast is a community feast. Be it in a village or the metros, uruka feast is a time for the family and community. The food items include freshly produced dal cooked with vegetables, a medley of seasonal vegetables called torkari or labra, roasted potatoes and brinjals, roasted fish, fish cooked with seasonal vegetables, chicken cooked with grounded sesame seeds, duck cooked with ash gourd, khorikat diya murgi (chicken skewered in bamboo sticks), masor khorika (skewered fish), sungat diya murgi (chicken cooked in bamboo tubes) sungat diya mas (fish cooked in bamboo tubes), patot diya mas (fish steamed in banana leaves) and many more. In the Barpeta district of lower Assam, there’s a special item called gatar alu which is potatoes cooked over the campfire on the uruka.

Abhijit Das from Guwahati expressed, “gatar alu is an emotion. No uruka feast is complete without a heap of gatar alu on our plate. It is a simple alu sabzi without any spice but nothing in the world can match the taste.”

Food on Magh Bihu

Pitha, laru, sandoh and mah-korai are typically made for Magh Bihu. However, this is only a general theme. Assam grows several varieties of rice. Some of these varieties are indigenous to Assam and among them, there are aromatic rice, waxy rice, semi-waxy rice and red rice. The aromatic rice in Assam is known as joha rice and the waxy variety of rice is called bora. Both joha and bora rice have GI tags and are indispensable ingredients for preparing Magh Bihu food. They are used in making puffed rice, flattened rice, sandoh, jolpan and pitha.

On the morning of Magh Bihu, jolpan is served with milk or curd and jaggery. It is made from various types of rice like bora saul, kumol saul that can be eaten after being soaked. Sandoh is another rice item where the rice is soaked for a minimum of 3 hours and then fried on a pan (traditionally, the pan is made of clay). After frying it for a few minutes, it is ground in a dheki ( a wooden, homemade mill). The ground rice is called sandoh and is eaten with milk and jaggery.

Any Bihu in Assam is incomplete without pitha. It is made from rice flour and has different fillings. Pitha is a generic term and there are at least 50 varieties of pithas in Assam. A few popular ones are narikolor pitha — a pitha made of Bora rice flour, and jaggery-coconut mix; til pitha — made of Bora rice flour, and jaggery-grounded sesame seeds mix.

These two pithas are the most common ones. The shape and size of these pithas differ from district to district. The pithas in upper Assam are elongated and narrow like little flutes while pithas in lower Assam can be half moon-shaped or flattened like a spatula.

Mah korai is a unique food item made only during Magh Bihu. It is made with fried bora rice, sesame seeds, black grams, green grams, black chickpeas, and peanuts. In some places, roasted ginger and coconut cubes are also added in. Mah korai are aromatic, and it is said that you cannot have mah korai without sharing.

Culinary traditions of Magh Bihu

Although the main rituals are the same, there are certain differences from place to place. For example, the size of the meiji, and the materials it is made of, differ from place to place. In upper Assam or eastern Assam, a meiji is built with logs and bamboo. But the mejis in lower Assam or western Assam are built with hay, kans grass and bamboo. There’s also a ritual in upper Assam to tie the fruit-bearing trees — it is believed that if you tie them, they will remain in your household and bear fruits for you. So early in the morning, all the trees in the area are tied with a hemp rope or a tender bamboo. But this tradition is not common in lower Assam.

On uruka, in lower Assam, particularly in the Barpeta district, a bhog made of milk and rice flour is offered to the cattle of the households. Every household that raises cows follows this ritual of cleaning the cowshed and offering bhog to them as they have also played a part in the fields. However, this ritual is not prevalent in upper Assam.

The culinary traditions also vary from place to place. For example, in upper Assam, it is mandatory to roast yam and sweet potatoes in the meiji fire and eat it. Otherwise, in the next life, you will be born as a pig. But in lower Assam, mah korai s eaten after throwing a handful of it to the meiji.

Although there are some differences in the food and culinary traditions of Magh Bihu, the essence is the same everywhere in the state. It is to celebrate nature, gratitude for filled hearths and good food.

Recipe : Narikolor Laru (Coconut Ladoo)

Ingredients
1 coconut
1 medium cup of sugar
A handful of semolina (optional)
2 small green cardamom (optional)
Method
Grate the coconut.
Heat a pan. Once it is hot, lower the heat.
Now add the grated coconut and start stirring it.
Add the sugar and the crushed cardamom slowly after five-six minutes.
Continue to stir the mix every 3-4 minutes.
Please note that we don't need to caramelize the mix. Just stir it until the sugar coats the coconut.
Once the mix reaches a sticky consistency, switch off the gas.
If you want, you can add a handful of semolina after roasting it separately.
Once the mix cools down a bit, take a small quantity and roll it into balls with your hands.
You can also add crushed peanuts to the mix to add some crunch in the ladoos.
Store in an airtight jar and enjoy with black tea.

Puspanjalee Das Dutta is a geographer turned writer and blogger who loves exploring geographical implications behind culinary habits. She can be reached here.

The GOYA JOURNAL

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