Patna: A prominent hotel in Bihar threw up a grand feast for some 500 villagers early this week to educate them on how delicious dishes can be cooked even without using tomatoes and onions, whose prices have sky-rocketed in recent weeks.

Tomatoes are currently being sold at Rs100 (Dh6) per kg whereas onion prices range between Rs40 to Rs50 a kg, thus upsetting budgets in most households.

The poor villagers were treated to sumptuous dishes at a hotel in Begusarai district on Tuesday evening with the message to try their hands in cooking tasty foods at home without using those two costlier vegetables and save money every month. Some five varieties of dishes were served to the villagers.

“The general thinking is that foods can’t be tasty without mixing tomatoes and onions. And, so I decided to serve dishes cooked without using these two vegetables to the villagers free of cost. Most of the invitees were those who were not ready to agree foods could be tasty without them,” said hotelier Dinkar Bhardwaj who hosted the feast at his hotel Banarsi Parvati Vatika.

He said it would have normally required 120kg of onions and 12kg of tomatoes to cook the food prepared for 500 villagers.

“But, by not using these two vegetables, I saved around Rs5,000 [Dh305],” Bhardwaj explained adding most of the invitees at the feast were local villagers who had just no idea of cooking tasty foods without using tomatoes and onions.

According to him, the villagers hugely praised him for giving new tips about the cooking skills and help save money. Many women also attended the feast which was first of its kind in Bihar.

Earlier, a prominent hotel in Patna had held a cooking session for local housewives to teach them how tasty vegetables could be cooked without using vegetable oil.

That show was also a big hit but in this case, the hotelier used thousands of rupees from his pocket to enlighten the villagers while treating them to a meal.

The high prices have taken tomatos and onions out of the reach of the common man, villagers said.

“We earnestly waited for ‘good days’ to come when the Narendra Modi government came to power in New Delhi in May this year but now we have lost all hopes of getting any respite from the new government. We feel we were befooled by the BJP. We simply want to forget it. Today, it’s hotelier like Bhardwaj who has emerged as our messiah as by following his advise we can at least save a little bit of money every month,” said a local villager Ranjan Kumar Rai.