A

n Uttarakhand homestay

paired the dark flatbread with

shallow fried green fiddlehead

ferns for dinner. Both tasted,

smelled, looked, and felt

different. The complementary dishes enhanced

palatability of the dinner. The ferns fiddled with

flavors of the hard blackish red flatbread for good.

Moisture of the vernal delicacy and oil softened the

bread, making it easy to chew. I could not describe

taste of the flatbread made from the goddess

of cereals. As, the taste did not match with five

principal tastes I knew: bitter, sweet, sour, salty,

and savory.

Flatbread

The flatbread means a flat thin

wide surface bread prepared

without yeast that increases

size of bread and lightens it.

The dark flatbread is made

from mandua aka finger millet.

Botanists christened the cereal

as Eleusine Coracana. The

generic name Eleusine means

“goddess of cereals” in Greek.

Nativity

The African native finger

millet, a cereal grass

bearing tiny edible seeds,

was introduced in India

thirty-forty centuries

ago. The millet adapted

Himalayan altitude and

weather well. The grass

is cultivated up to 3,000

meters.

Long Shelf Life

The drought and pest resistant qualities earned it epithet of the famine’s crop. You can store finger millet

for more than a decade without the fear of decay and pest.

Cooking Styles

Even dosais, dumplings, idlis, pancakes, porridge, and sattu are made from the cereal.

Both tasted,

smelled, looked,

and felt different.

The complementary

dishes enhanced

palatability of the

dinner.

352
Volume 4, Issue 1 | June 2019