The Indian subcontinent · Volume 17, The Sealed Pot, the Ember and the Roasted Flour

Thekua

Name: Thekua
Total time: 1 h
Yield: Makes about 20
Cuisine: The Gangetic Plain, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Awadh and Jharkhand
Ingredients: 500g wheat flour; 250g jaggery, dissolved in a little warm water; 60g ghee; 60g desiccated coconut (optional); 0.5 tsp ground fennel or cardamom; enough for deep-frying oil, for deep-frying

Bihar

Illustration

Time: 1 hour

Researched: Researched from 106 sources in the brief

A stiff dough of wheat flour, jaggery and ghee, flavoured with fennel or cardamom, hand-shaped or pressed with a carved wooden mould into discs, deep-fried until firm and deeply golden rather than soft. Thekua is, specifically and repeatedly, named the mahaprasad, the great ritual offering, of Chhath Puja, offered alongside seasonal fruit before the setting and rising sun across the festival's four days. It is deliberately dense and firm, meant to keep for days as both prasad and travel food, and the popular claim that it dates to the "ancient Magadh Empire" and was carried by soldiers rests on no source better than a single commercial food blog and should not be repeated as fact.

by Bihar

Varanasi's own religious layer runs on a different axis entirely: a Hindu royal house's employment of Shia administrators, rather than a Muslim court's patronage of everyone else, which is precisely why its own version of Ganga-Jamuni syncretism reads as the mirror image of Lucknow's rather than a copy of it. Bihar and Jharkhand's religious layer is quieter in this chapter's sourcing but no less real: Chhath Puja's sun-worship, four days of fasting and offering built around thekua and seasonal fruit, and, across Jharkhand's Santal, Munda, Ho and Oraon communities, a living Sarna and animist ritual calendar in which handia, the fermented rice drink, is not incidental refreshment but is bound, in the strongest sourcing this chapter found, into the Santal community's own creation story.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Makes about 20. About 1 hour.

Ingredients

500g wheat flour
250g jaggery, dissolved in a little warm water
60g ghee
60g desiccated coconut (optional)
0.5 tsp ground fennel or cardamom
enough for deep-frying oil, for deep-frying

Method

Rub the ghee into the flour until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
Work in the dissolved jaggery, coconut and spice, bringing everything together into a stiff dough, adding a very little water only if needed. The dough should be firm, not soft.
Shape into small discs by hand, or press into a carved wooden mould, and prick the surface lightly.
Deep-fry over low to medium heat, turning occasionally, 10 to 15 minutes, until firm all the way through and deeply golden brown. A too-hot oil browns the outside before the centre cooks through.
Cool completely before storing; thekua keeps well for several days.

What a modern chef changes

The frying temperature controlled, not guessed at

Rung 5, adapted

Method

Fry at a monitored, steady 150°C, checked with a probe thermometer rather than judged by eye, since thekua's whole point is a firm, evenly cooked centre under a deep golden crust, which a too-hot oil defeats by colouring the outside before the inside sets.
Dissolve the jaggery separately and strain it through a fine sieve before working it into the dough, removing any grit or impurity a lower-grade jaggery can carry.
Rest the shaped discs 15 minutes before frying, uncovered, to firm the surface slightly and help the mould's pattern hold crisply through frying.

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