Hand-pounded Chire from Gedi

We tried a bowl of Indori Poha with this and it worked out delicious. The whole sweet-savoury-spicy-pungent medley complements the nuttiness in the chire with the slight tartness of pomegranate.

about 

Processed in a traditional dḥēṃki and from g̃ēḍi: an indigenous folk rice variety from Sundarbans, these chire are deliciously toasty and are, to quite an extent, unyielding in liquid. We had fun with it in our Indori Poha which was a cracker of a bowl meal.

what you can cook with it

We have found these chire to be well-suited for poha, because of their good liquid absorption characteristic. It takes on any kind of flavour, which makes it suitable for salad bowls, cereal bowls or puffed in a dry chutney mix.

About Chire

Chire are derivatives of rice that are popular in most of the rice consuming nations in South Asia. The traditional way of making them is to parboil the rice grains with husk, drain and dry them completely. The next day, the parboiled grains are dry-roasted and immediately transferred to a shallow hole below a pounding lever, known in Bengal as dhneki. As soon as the grains are poured into the hole, the lever is manoeuvred by foot at one end while the hot grains are turned and tossed inside the hole by hand. Clearly, the process is an example of experience and pure craftsmanship requiring dexterity and acute sense of timing by both the persons, mostly women, involved; and the job a risky one. The flattened flakes are then winnowed using a kulo that gets rid of the loose husks and broken grains. What is left are toasty additive-free flakes of rice, consumed and loved across regions that know about them and which can potentially replace processed-sugared corn flakes in breakfast cereals.

Nowadays, there are machines fitted with rollers and a belt to flatten the hot grains and winnow out the husks, but the flavour and taste of the pounded flattened rice remain unmatched.  Unfortunately, as with any other consumables in the post-Industrial and late capitalist era, profits and market price have led most hand-made chire producers to seek out those roller machines. We can only hope that with a fair price we get back flavour on our plates and keep on encouraging our farmers the beautiful work they do.