Khichdi is Mithila’s great comfort food: rice and lentils cooked together to a soft, porridge-like one-pot, lifted with ghee, turmeric and ginger and served with chokha, pickle, papad and a knob of more ghee on top. Easy on the body, it is the food given to the unwell and the elderly, and the first solid many a Maithil child is fed.
It has a festive day of its own at Makar Sankranti, locally Tila Sakrait, when khichdi is cooked and shared along with sesame sweets — so much so that the day is sometimes simply called “khichdi”. Plain and unpretentious, it is the quiet centre around which the region’s showier festive dishes turn.