Old-timers' guide to gourmet delight

For Shankar Kishore Chaudhary, answering inquisitive queries about his products has become a way of life. And why not, for this herbal farmer from Hajipur in Vaishali district has been dishing out exotic sweet delicacies made of ‘ole’ (elephant foot yam) when everyone else traditionally associates the crop with chokha, chutney and acchaar.
“We have been preparing 56 different ‘ole’ items, which include ‘puri’, ‘bhujia’, ‘chhole’, ‘rasgulla’, ‘chyawanprash’, ‘ice cream’, ‘halwa’, ‘peda’, etc,” said Chaudhary, in Patna for participating in the Vyanjan Mela at Bihar Diwas celebrations in Gandhi Maidan. He has also received two national level awards in farming. His biggest reward, however, came in January 2010 when Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had a taste of the ‘ole’ kheer and lavished praises on him.
In business since 1994, Chaudhary does farming on three hectares of land in Hajipur and has been exporting ‘ole’ seeds to states like UP, Goa, Haryana, Kerala and MP among others. Besides he would soon be heading off to Kerala for imparting training on effective farming techniques to self-help groups there.

Somewhat similar is the case with Sanjeev Kumar, a young organic farmer already bestowed with a national silver medal and a progressive farmer award. He has put up a cauliflower ‘kheer’ stall at the food festival. “We have been engaged in organic farming of cauliflower, a fact that has been recognized and duly supported by the state government,” said Sanjeev, who also happens to be the secretary of Annadata Farmers’ Club, which has around 25 active members. Their Rajendra-Chakwara variety of cauliflower (named after Rajendra Prasad Agricultural University and Chakwara village) is to be released by the state government in 2012 and the process to patent this variety is already on, he informs.

Some, like Sanjay Lal of the ‘Silao ka Khaaja’ stall, have been into the preparation of Bihari delicacies since ages. “My shop at Silao, called Shri Kali Sah, is more than a 100 years old. We have been into the ‘khaaja’ business since the time of my great grandfather,” he informed. He too, like many of the distinguished stall-owners at the Vyanjan Mela, has many awards to his name, one of them being the Sagar Mahotsava award he received in Mauritius. Lal reminisced about the time when former President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam, had tasted and appreciated his ‘khaaja’ made in pure ghee. “Much before that, I used to send sugar-free ‘khaaja’ made of ‘gurh chashni’ on special demand to former PM Morarji Desai,” he reveals after some prodding. The Bihar CM too, supposedly, loves his ‘khaaja’, a bulk of which is bought by visiting NRIs and foreigners to be taken back to their respective countries. The next step for Lal is setting up his own ‘khaaja’ plant in Silao, the registration process of which is already complete.

Swastik Sattu, a homegrown company, too has its presence at the food festival, and a heavy rush is seen throughout the day at the stall, what with ‘sattu’ being one of the most preferred item of consumption and relief in Bihar during summer. “Besides being tasty, ‘sattu’ also has many medicinal properties and negative side-effects, unlike junk food,” said Ramesh Agrawal, MD of Swastik Sattu. They have recently launched Swastik Gold Tea, a product packed and branded exclusively in Bihar.

Visitors have been feasting on ‘balushahi’ at Suraj Kumar’s stall. All of 19, Suraj is looking after his family business with vigour and dreams of taking it places. Others, like Mahesh Kumar Singh, have been exporting their product – ‘laai’ from Barh – to countries like Mauritius. Looks like the CM’s vision of putting a Bihari food product on the dining table of every household in the country is inching closer to its realization, what with the Bihari cuisine finally coming into its own at the Vyanjan Mela.