Dal pittha is what a Bihari kitchen makes instead of frying. Rice flour is scalded with boiling water and worked into a hot dough, pinched into cups in the palm, filled with chana dal that has been soaked and ground coarse and seasoned with garlic, ginger and green chilli, then closed and steamed. Nothing goes near oil. What comes out is soft and slightly translucent, with a filling that stays grainy and savoury inside it, and it is eaten at any hour — as breakfast, as an evening thing with tea, as the food handed to whoever has just arrived. It belongs to the same instinct as litti, which is to build a whole meal around dal and a grain and no vegetable at all, but where litti was made to survive a journey in ash, pittha was made to be eaten in the house, hot, straight out of the steam.
INGREDIENTS
- 200 g chana dal (soaked 4 hours)
- 6 garlic cloves
- 2 cm ginger
- 3 green chillies
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- ½ tsp asafoetida
- 1 tsp salt (for the filling)
- 1 tbsp mustard oil
- 300 g fine rice flour
- 600 ml water
- 1 tsp salt (for the dough)
- 1 tsp ghee
- a handful of coriander leaves (chopped)
METHOD
- Drain the soaked chana dal well and grind it coarse with the garlic, ginger and green chillies. Do not add water; the paste should be rubbly and dry.
- Mix the paste with the cumin, asafoetida, salt, mustard oil and coriander.
- Bring the water to a rolling boil with the salt and the ghee.
- Take it off the heat, tip in the rice flour all at once, and stir hard with the back of a spoon until it comes together in a mass.
- Cover and leave 5 minutes, then knead on a board while still as hot as your hands will take, until smooth and pliable.
- Pinch off a walnut of dough, roll it into a ball, and press a hollow into it with your thumb, turning to thin the walls into a cup.
- Fill with a teaspoon of the dal, then pinch the rim closed and smooth the seam. Keep the rest of the dough covered as you work or it will dry.
- Steam the pitthas in a single layer for 15 to 18 minutes, until the surface turns from chalky to slightly glossy.
- Let them sit a minute before lifting, or they tear. Serve hot with coriander chutney.
