Tehri: rice, potatoes and winter vegetables cooked together in one pot with whole spices and turmeric. Not layered like a biryani, and never made without potato.

Rugra: a wild puffball foraged from sal roots in the Jharkhand monsoon, cooked in mustard oil with onion, garlic and turmeric. Uncultivable, and vanishing.

Bihari khichdi: rice with chana or masoor dal, tempered with onion and red chilli, served the only way Bihar serves it — with curd, papad, ghee and pickle.

Chilka roti: rice and chana dal soaked overnight, ground at dawn and spread thin on a hot griddle. A naturally gluten-free Jharkhandi breakfast.

Dhuska: soaked rice and chana dal ground to a batter and deep-fried until burnished outside and soft within. Jharkhand market food, served with ghugni.

Dal pithi, or dal dulhan: hand-pressed wheat dumplings simmered inside arhar dal until the pot thickens, finished with a garlic and ghee tempering.

Dal pittha: rice flour scalded into a hot dough, filled with coarse-ground spiced chana dal and steamed. Bihar’s soft, oil-free stuffed dumpling.