What’s the best local dish you’ve ever eaten while traveling?
I had never heard of Faraa before that journey.
I was travelling through Chhattisgarh when, somewhere between two places I had actually planned to visit, I stopped at a small home for lunch.
There was no menu.
No food photographs.
Just the smell of something steaming in the kitchen.
I asked what it was.
“Faraa,” the woman replied.
She said it so casually that I almost missed the significance of the word.
What arrived on my plate looked incredibly simple,small steamed dumplings made from rice flour, soft and light, with a gentle seasoning that made every bite comforting.
I remember thinking, How can something this simple taste so good?
Perhaps because it wasn’t trying to impress me.
It was simply food.
The woman told me that Faraa was something she had grown up eating at home. Her mother made it. Her grandmother made it. It was the kind of dish that appeared naturally in a household rather than on a restaurant menu.
And suddenly, the little rice dumpling on my plate felt different.
It wasn’t just lunch anymore.
It was a recipe travelling quietly through generations.
That is what fascinates me about forgotten flavours.
We often think food disappears when people stop making it.
But sometimes it disappears much earlier ,when people stop asking their mothers and grandmothers how to make it.
I left that afternoon remembering the taste of Faraa.
But more than that, I remembered the woman who served it to me without ever calling it special.
Maybe that is how the best recipes survive.
Someone simply keeps making them.
Until one day, a traveller like me comes along and asks,
“What is this?”
And a forgotten flavour gets a chance to be remembered again.
From my travel notebook
Series: Recipes That Remember — Forgotten Flavours
Some recipes are not written in cookbooks. They are written in families.
Healing through words 😄 
One response to “The Little Rice Dumpling I Found in Chhattisgarh”
You captured the exact magic of travel, the moments that happen entirely between the destinations we actually planned to visit. There is somethign incredibly grounding about a meal that isn’t trying to impress you. Good one.
LikeLiked by 2 people