Sattu Sherbet

Sattu is the flour of roasted split black gram, Bengal gram or barley, ground fine, and it belongs to the farming country of the Gangetic plain, above all Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. It is a food of the field and the road, carried by labourers and pilgrims because it needs no cooking and keeps without trouble. The sherbet made from it is the summer form of that old provision, mixed with water and salt or with jaggery, and it is carried by the households of the region from one generation to the next.

The base is flour of roasted chana dal (Bengal gram, Cicer arietinum), or of roasted barley (Hordeum vulgare) in some households, milled to a fine, pale-brown powder with a toasted smell. For the savoury sherbet, the flour is whisked into cold water with black salt, roasted ground cumin, lime juice, chopped green chilli and fresh mint or coriander. The sweet version takes jaggery or sugar in place of the salt and spice. The result is a thin, faintly grainy drink, closer to a loose gruel than to a clear sherbet, and it is drunk at once from a tumbler.

The salted sherbet is drunk in the heat of the day, often alongside or in place of a light meal, and it sits well beside litti and chokha, the roasted wheat balls and mashed vegetables of Bihar, which are themselves made with sattu. The sour lime and the black salt cut the dense, toasty flour and keep the drink from tasting heavy or pasty. The sweet form with jaggery is taken on its own, and the tradition counts sattu a cooling food for the summer months.