Aloo Bhujia is the most everyday of Maithil dishes — diced or sliced potato tossed in smoking mustard oil with a tempering of panchforan or fenugreek, green chilli and turmeric, cooked dry and a little crisp at the edges. It appears at almost any meal, the dependable partner to rice-and-dal, roti or puri.
It is also the classic travel food: a tighter, drier aloo with puri, wrapped in a sal-leaf or newspaper, has fed generations of Maithils on the long train journeys out of Darbhanga and Samastipur to the cities where they work.