A Ranchi restaurant shows how to boost immunity, the tribal way
At Ajam Emba, Aruna Tirkey revives lost recipes and celebrates local Jharkhandi fare
About 30 minutes from Ranchi’s popular hotspots such as Hoppipola and Capital Coffee, a small, dusty lane off the main Kanke Road leads you to the entrance of Ajam Emba.
It’s a single-storeyed structure with a tin roof and it may remind you of a local’s home. A wooden dheki — a traditional tool used to thresh rice — stands at the entrance. You can choose to sit on the floor, your back against a wall painted with a village scene, or opt for a table-chair setup.
A staff of 12 local women, draped in the ethnic, red-and-white bordered lalpaad saris, are busy in the kitchen preparing paper-thin chilka roti, made from rice flour, on a wood-fired stove.
On another stove, they slow-cook mutton for mutton handi in a clay pot. The meat is obtained from free-range local fowls populating the forested lands of Jharkhand. “The restaurant is on the outskirts of the city, but people drive down specially to have a meal there,” says Ranchi-based fashion designer Swastika Stuti, who visited Ajam Emba in October 2018, a few months after it launched. She picked up a parcel of mutton handi. “Now, many restaurants in Ranchi claim to make it authentically but the mutton turns out to be too oily or spicy. This version was just perfect.”
The kitchen stock also has seasonal greens, flowers and native grains that are used in chutneys, curries and stir-fries. Together, these elements uphold the restaurant’s mission to revive lost tribal recipes, celebrate Jharkhand’s indigenous produce and inculcate an entrepreneurial spirit among its tribal women.
Ajam Emba means tasty food in the Kurukh language. It is the brainchild of Aruna Tirkey, who belongs to the indigenous Oraon community. Growing up in a village on the outskirts of Ranchi, Tirkey’s childhood memories feature meals governed by local, seasonal produce that is packed with nutrition. She recreates this ethos in the restaurant, using her mother’s recipes and traditional cooking techniques.
The mhar jhor, for instance, is a soupy concoction made from the starch of brown rice and spiced with local herbs, that “my mother would make when my brother’s stomach needed relief from the spicy food that he’d have.”
Flowers such as the jirhul, found in the Saranda forest and considered a symbol of friendship, add flavour to curries featuring local fish varieties such as getu, budu or the desi magur that are rare, seasonal and “known for their therapeutic value”. The protein-rich sanei (Crotalaria juncea) flower is mashed into bharta. The beng saag (Bacopa monnieri), considered a memory enhancer, is pounded into chutney.
The chakod saag, made from the seasonal cassia tora plant, comes packed with vitamin C, iron, calcium and beta carotene. It’s said to improve hemoglobin levels and boost immunity. Tirkey distinctly remembers her father and aunt venturing out during the months of September and October to gather this leafy green from open fields and orchards surrounding her native home. The plant would be washed, wrapped in sal leaves and left to dry near the wood-fired chulha. “This technique helped preserve it for use through the year,” says Tirkey, 47, who now sources the produce from local suppliers from nearby villages and districts.
Many of these ingredients and tribal cooking practices continue to prevail in Tirkey’s home kitchen. That’s not the case elsewhere. “The tribal cultures have changed completely,” says the entrepreneur, who has been working in the rural development sector for two decades, which includes being part of projects on women empowerment and consulting the UNDP on the implementation of the Forest Rights Act.
Her work stints in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand exposed her “to the growing disintegration of tribal food culture — especially in urban settings and among tribal youths, who are increasingly inclined to eat junk food,” she writes in this article.
“The tribals feel that they will be seen as ‘poor people’ if they eat indigenous grains [over commercial rice].”
As a result, nutrient-rich millets such as gondli (Panicum sumatrense), once integral to the tribal diet in Jharkhand, are now relegated to fodder for livestock. At Ajam Emba, she uses this millet to make halwa. The menu also includes her version of the Santali jil pithas where the rice flour dough is stuffed with paneer or chicken mince, seasoned, wrapped in the sal leaf and cooked. Tirkey has included modern innovations such as chicken-stuffed madua (ragi) momos — where the high-calcium staple millet of Jharkhand replaces the maida in the wrapper — to entice the younger generation.
Another discovery is ‘rice tea’ made from roasted brown rice rather than tea leaves. “I’ve lived in Ranchi all my life and I didn’t know it existed,” says Ashish Satyavrat Sahu, a 29-year-old fashion designer. On his visit, he relished the chilka roti “as thin as my grandmother would make” served in earthenware. The accompanying ghugni (black chickpea curry) and chutney arrived in a leaf bowl locally known as the dona. “While people in Delhi and Mumbai are now waking up to sustainable ways of eating, like swapping thermocol plates with eco-friendly options, such practices have existed in tribal cultures since ages,” he says.
Tirkey’s food certainly has its fans.
Lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Nimisha Sinha, who visits Ajam Emba every two months, adds, “The food is simple, fresh and really light on the stomach. They also take care of the hygiene. Each dish has a distinctive taste and it’s not something I can make at home.”
Apart from the restaurant, Tirkey also spreads awareness of indigenous foods by participating in food festivals, exhibitions and events. She has catered to over 5,000 people at events in Goa, Prayagraj and Ahmedabad. “The one myth I want to bust through my enterprise is that tribal food has no taste and it’s ‘rough’ food,” she says.
Culinary historian and author Ashish Chopra, who has documented tribal cuisines of India extensively, sums up: “With COVID-19, everyone is going back to the roots and having haldi and ginger to boost immunity. But the food of the tribals has always been that way. They use natural ingredients with minimal spice and so, the incidences of diseases are also minimal. However, their cultures are dying fast and so, an initiative like this one, which focuses on their food, goes a long way in promoting and preserving their identity because the language of food is universal.”
COVID-19 update: Currently, Ajam Emba is open for takeaways on a pre-order basis.
