Whole-wheat balls stuffed with roasted sattu, garlic and ajwain, roasted over coal and served with smoked brinjal-tomato chokha and ghee.

Roasted gram-flour stuffing with mustard oil, lemon and green chilli, folded into whole-wheat paratha. Mild, filling and high in protein.

Steamed rice-flour dumplings filled with spiced chana dal — Bihar's answer to the momo, eaten with coriander chutney.

Gram-flour dumplings simmered in a light, tangy yoghurt kadhi, finished with a mustard-seed and dry-chilli tempering.

White peas slow-cooked with ginger and cumin, finished with lemon and raw onion. A Bihari evening staple.

Black chana cooked down with whole spices until the gravy clings, topped with raw onion, green chilli and a squeeze of lemon.

Boiled potato mashed with mustard oil, raw onion, green chilli and coriander. Simple, sharp, and the thing people miss from home.

Brinjal charred whole over open flame until the skin blisters, then mashed with mustard oil, garlic and green chilli. The smoke is the point.

Roasted tomato mashed with garlic, coriander and mustard oil — the sweeter, sharper counterpoint to the brinjal.

Two litti, chokha, a seasonal curry, ghugni, rice, dal, pickle, papad and a sweet. The full plate, the way it lands at a Bihari lunch.

Rice and moong dal cooked soft with turmeric, served with chokha, papad, pickle and a spoon of ghee. Saturday lunch in Bihar.

Baby potatoes fried and then finished in a mustard-oil gravy with panch phoron. Thick, dark and properly spiced.

Long-grain rice tempered with cumin and ghee. The plain, steady base every Bihari gravy expects.

Four litti with both chokhas, ghugni, and a thekua. What we would order ourselves.

Eight litti, all three chokhas, ghugni, kadhi bari, jeera rice and four malpua. Enough for four hungry people.

Wheat and jaggery biscuits fried in ghee, pressed in a wooden mould. Made for Chhath, eaten all year.

Fried pancakes soaked in cardamom syrup, served warm with rabri. On the menu around Holi and Chhath.

Fox nuts simmered in thickened milk with cardamom and a little jaggery. Mithila's own dessert, and lighter than it sounds.

Flattened rice with thick set curd and jaggery. What all of Bihar eats on Makar Sankranti morning — on our menu through winter.

Roasted gram flour whisked with water, lemon, black salt and roasted cumin. Bihar's summer drink, and better for you than anything in a bottle.

Churned buttermilk with roasted cumin, black salt and curry leaf. Cuts through anything fried.

Thekua, kheer, rice, chana dal, seasonal vegetables and fruit — cooked without onion or garlic, the way the festival asks.