In search of ‘mahua': A pastry chef's dive into rural Madhya Pradesh

Mint

26-05-2025

A back-to-back rare tiger and leopard sighting, an untoward camera-breaking accident, and a bountiful mahua harvest later, I made my way back to my urban cave from the pastoral settings of Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh. Earlier in April, my friend and fellow chef Auroni Mookerjee hosted me at his parents' homestay Salban in Balaghat district. Nestled at the mouth of the reserve and protected by mighty saal trees, it made for a cosy, hidden nest. Not only was it equipped with the many comforts a homestay has to offer, it was also home to mahua trees.
The drying of mahua flowers and the liquor-making process that follows thereafter have been an age-old practice here, but what truly enthused me as a pastry chef was the syrup Auroni's mum prepared at the homestay. There was very little information about this syrup at my disposal, and the notes I took were derived from my observations.
One morning, as I set foot in the large verandah, I got whiffs of boiling rice, but my chef nose also picked floral scents — earthy, oak-like but unfamiliar. I could hear a mixer-grinder in the corner. There, however, in the warm and open setting of the verandah, most of the noise dissolved.
The homestay staff had tubs of freshly-picked mahua flowers that looked like translucent white beads. They resembled mogra flower buds, but bigger and fleshier. They were being ground in the mixer-grinder into a watery and fibrous pulp, and then strained using a lovely chequered kitchen towel — the kind that mistakenly left most of our kitchens many moons ago.
The juice was fully strained and squeezed till every last drop. I was distracted by the mahua petal pulp and began imagining it as a replacement to the carrots in my mother's carrot cake recipe, only to learn that it was tasteless fodder for farm cattle. The liquid was poured into a large saucepan on an induction stove and left to boil.
After a good afternoon nap, I came out to find the boiling liquid had changed colour. The sugars in the juice had begun to caramelise. As the day came to an end, the liquid in the pot halved and turned a dark amber. Because this was an uncontrolled practice at home, I noticed the dissimilarities between batches but more on that later. I was happy about the prospect of a syrup finally dethroning maple. Had maple syrup been colonising my kitchen? Why didn't I know this existed? What would be the results at the Miam Studio? Could I make an entremet with the many forms of mahua but still honour its simplicity? Mahua entremet by chef Bani Nanda (left); mahua flowers
If you read Auroni's father and co-founder of Salban Homestay Jhampan Mookerjee's chapter 'The Sound of Flowers' in Meeta Kapur's book Chillies & Porridge, you will surely look at these flowers with more curiosity. Mookerjee penned his adventures around the liquor making from mahua, and the chapter geared me for my research trip.
It seems a couple was in love, but could not marry as they were from different tribes. Rather than break this union, they went deep into the forest and killed themselves. It is said that watered by their blood, two plants grew on that spot. God was so moved that he named one plant ganja (or cannabis) and the other mahua. It is believed that mahua and ganja are family.
On day two, we headed out to a neighbouring village to get a glimpse of themahua liquor-making process. 'Do you have a salwar kameez?', Auroni shyly asked. I didn't, but I paired a cotton night dress with jogging pants and ignored the atrocious results. Strolling in a small village wearing western-wear could intimidate the village folk. I almost never contest these requests, but as I walked the muddy path, I saw women of all age groups bathe carelessly out in the open. The women draped sarees without blouses, weren't hiding their legs and hadn't a care in the world. I felt free.
Up until this point, I had only worked with fresh mahua flowers, saw the juicing and the syrup-making. But this wasn't how mahua was used. No one incorporated fresh flowers in any form. There were just too many and the harvest came in abundance daily. They had to be dried.
Liquor making has always intimated me. It was perhaps the perception I had of the process — big industrial machinery, chemical laboratory-like settings and just the opacity of it all. One of the farmers in the village simplified it in under eight minutes. 'These are the large barrels that we submerge the flowers in with water," he mumbled as he pointed to an outlandish amount of rotten flowers. It wasn't a pretty sight and the dainty image of the sacred pearl-like flowers dissolved immediately in my head (but not forever). If my clientele back home saw this, they may not support my menu, but I knew I would publish the photos unabashedly. Not everything around cultivation, harvests and processes is pretty. Maybe we all need a taste of reality.
The farmer wasn't making a batch, but was kind enough to do a dummy set-up of the distillation. There was a stack of three matkas or pots. The bottom one was placed directly on the wood-fire or chulha. I was told the fermented mahua juice would go here. The middle one had a long nose-like opening and the topmost was filled with cool water. The vapours would heat and rise up to the middle pot. Upon striking the cool base of the topmost pot, they'd condensate and eventually filter out through the opening. What poured out was mahua liquor. Better than any bottled kind we had tasted. Was it the wood-fired heat? Was it the pots? Was it the single distillation? Was it the carefree and unregulated framework it was made in? Did these make it more enthralling?
It brought me to the end of my Kanha adventure. With a heart full of mahua and tiger stories, I made my way back to Delhi with a suitcase filled with a questionable amount of liquid. It wasn't a pretty picture and I was sure of an airport security stand-off, but nobody at the sleepy Raipur Airport seemed to care. My head was brimming with ideas. I had dried mahua flowers, mahua liquor and mahua syrup.
The entremet came together after lots of research and several trials. The final layers included a mahua syrup sponge, chironji praline, salted caramel, mahua ganache and hung curd mousse.
Bani Nanda is the chef and founder of Miam Patisserie, New Delhi.