The Deccan plateau and its millets

The Deccan is the great triangular upland of peninsular India, lying between the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats and tilting gently eastward, so that its rivers, the Godavari, the Krishna and the Kaveri among them, run across it towards the Bay of Bengal. The Western Ghats take the monsoon rain on their seaward face and leave the interior in a rain shadow, and it is this dry, red-and-black-soiled country, hot for much of the year and uncertain in its rains, that has shaped what is grown and eaten on it. Millets, grown here for a very long time and long before wheat and rice dominated the Indian table, are the grains of this land.

The Deccan is a country of small, drought-hardy grains. Sorghum, called jowar in Maharashtra and jola in Karnataka (Sorghum bicolor), and pearl millet, bajra (Pennisetum glaucum), cover the black cotton soils, while finger millet, ragi (Eleusine coracana), is the grain of the red soils of southern Karnataka. These crops ask little of the land: they ripen on modest rain, store well, and carry a household through a poor season. That, rather than any fashion, is why they have stayed at the centre of the plateau's cooking. Alford and Duguid, travelling the south and the interior, write of a cooking in which the grain, not the sauce, is the foundation of the meal, and in which rice is the grain of the wetter coast and the irrigated river valleys. The grains are cooked in a few plain ways, each of which suits the flour. Jowar is ground and pressed or patted by hand into flat unleavened breads, bhakri in Maharashtra and jolada rotti in northern Karnataka, baked on an iron griddle with no rolling pin, since the flour has no gluten to hold a thin sheet together; the cook shapes the dough with damp fingers and the palm. Ragi is stirred into boiling water and shaped into a smooth, heavy ball, ragi mudde, which is swallowed in pieces with a sauce rather than chewed. Bajra flour, more at home in the drier north of the plateau and in Rajasthan, is made into similar breads. Each preparation is simple and quick, and each depends on a hot surface or a rolling boil and a steady hand. What accompanies the grain is as much a product of the dry country as the grain itself. Pulses, above all pigeon pea, toor dal (Cajanus cajan), and chickpea, are the usual partners, cooked down into dals and the soured, tempered stews of Karnataka and Andhra. Groundnut, sesame and dried coconut, which keep through the dry months, are ground into dry chutney powders and thick pastes, and the Deccan relies on them for richness where the coast uses fresh coconut. Chillies are central here: the plateau grows two of the country's most celebrated, Byadagi chilli from northern Karnataka, prized for its deep colour, and Guntur Sannam chilli from Andhra Pradesh, valued for its heat, both Geographical Indications. Tamarind (Tamarindus indica), raw mango and curry leaf (Murraya koenigii) provide the sourness and fragrance that the heat requires. The plateau's cooking divides along the old political lines. The Marathi country has its spare, peppery dishes of lentil and groundnut; Karnataka has the vegetable stews, the rice-and-lentil bisi bele bath and the sweet-sour balance of the south; Hyderabad, the seat of the Nizams, joined a court cooking of meat, rice and nuts to the Telugu country's love of tamarind and chilli, and Hyderabad haleem is today a protected name. Through all of it runs the contrast between the grain-and-pulse household table of the farmer and the rich, rice-based dishes of the court and the festival, and the millets belong chiefly to the first.

The Deccan meal is built around the grain, with a hot, soured and often very pungent accompaniment: a bhakri or jolada rotti with a dry chutney of groundnut or sesame and chilli, a thick dal tempered with mustard seed, curry leaf and asafoetida (Ferula assa-foetida), and a cooling dish of curd or buttermilk beside it. Ragi mudde is served with a spicy sauce of pulses or vegetables, and sour tamarind and raw mango carry much of the seasoning. The flavours are bold but unhurried, and the grain's nutty, slightly earthy taste is the ground against which the chilli and sourness are set.