Litti Chokha

A stall by the road in Patna at dusk. The litti are sitting on the coals, blackening in patches, and the man turns them with his fingers. He takes one, presses it in his palm until it cracks open, and drops it straight into a bowl of melted ghee. The chokha is next to it in a heap, mashed by hand, still coarse, with raw mustard oil poured over. You eat it with your hands, standing, with a green chilli. There is no gravy and none is wanted.

Two of our products carry this. Gir Cow's A2 Ghee goes into the dough as moyan, rubbed through the atta until it looks like breadcrumbs, and that is what makes the litti crumble instead of turning tough. More of it waits melted at the end for dunking, which in Bihar is not a step you skip. In the chokha, wooden cold pressed black mustard oil goes in raw and cold, straight off the spoon, and because it is pressed slowly in a wooden ghaani it still has the bite a chokha needs.

The one thing that decides a litti is the seal. Pinch the dough shut over the sattu, roll it smooth between your palms, and check it for cracks before it goes near the heat. One small crack and the sattu leaks out and burns, and you are left holding a hollow ball.

How to make it

1. Rub the 3 tbsp ghee into the atta with the ajwain and salt until the flour looks like breadcrumbs and holds its shape when you squeeze a fistful. Add water little by little and knead a firm dough, stiffer than roti dough. Cover and rest 30 minutes.
2. Mix all the sattu filling ingredients with 2 to 3 tbsp water. It should be crumbly and just damp enough to hold together when pressed, never a wet paste. Taste it. It should be salty, sour and sharp, because it is the only seasoning inside the litti.
3. Roast the brinjal, tomatoes and 3 whole garlic cloves directly on a gas flame, turning with tongs, for 10 to 12 minutes, until the skins are black and blistered and the brinjal has collapsed. Cool a little, then peel off the burnt skin. In an oven, roast at 220C for 40 minutes.
4. Mash the roasted brinjal, tomatoes, garlic and boiled potatoes together with your hand or a wooden masher. Add the onion, green chillies, salt, coriander and 2 tbsp raw mustard oil. Do not use a mixer. Chokha should stay rough and uneven.
5. Divide the dough into 10 balls. Flatten each with your fingers into an 8 cm disc, put 1.5 tbsp of the sattu in the middle, pull the edges up over the filling and pinch them shut. Roll gently between your palms into a smooth ball with no cracks.
6. Bake at 200C for 30 to 35 minutes, turning them every 10 minutes, until hard and golden with brown spots. On the stove, cook covered on a tawa on low heat for 10 minutes a side, then hold each one over an open flame with tongs for 30 seconds for the char.
7. Crack each litti open a little by pressing it in your palm. Dunk it in the melted ghee for a few seconds, or spoon ghee generously over the crack. In Bihar this step is not optional.
8. Pile the litti in a bowl or a sal leaf plate with the chokha alongside, add a raw green chilli and eat with your hands while hot.

Tips

• Buy sattu fresh. We do not sell it. Look for chana sattu made from roasted black gram, and smell it before you buy. Old sattu smells dusty and flat, and no amount of pickle masala will lift it.
• Get the dough right. Too soft and the litti loses its shape in the oven. Too dry and it cracks as you seal it and the sattu escapes. It should feel firm, like clay, and stay smooth when rolled.
• The pickle masala matters. A spoon of the oily masala from the bottom of a mango pickle jar is what gives the filling its Bihari taste. If you have none, use 1/2 tsp mustard powder with a little extra lemon juice.
• Storage: litti keep 2 days in an airtight box and revive well in a hot oven or on a tawa for 5 minutes. Chokha should be eaten the same day, since roasted brinjal turns watery overnight.
• If your litti taste dry inside, you were short on ghee. Both the moyan in the dough and the dunk at the end are doing real work here, so do not cut either down.