Pittha (rice roll or traditional Bihari dumpling)

Ingredients:

For outer layer:

• Raw rice flour: 2 cup
• Salt: 1 teaspoon
• water: 1 cup

For stuffing:

• Chana dal (Bengal gram): 1 cup
• Oil: 1 teaspoon
• Jeera (Cumin seed): 1 teaspoon
• Garlic: 3 flakes (big size)
• Salt: 1 teaspoon
• Green chilly: 2-4 no.
• Ginger: 1 inch piece
• Turmeric powder: half teaspoon
• Ajwain(carom seed): half teaspoon
• Kalonji: half teaspoon

Preparation:

For stuffing:

1. Soak dal for 3-4(overnight) hours and grind this dal coarsely along with salt, green chili and garlic. Keep aside.
2. Put a non stick fry pan on the stove.
3. Put oil in it, when smoke begins coming add cumin seed. Wait for few seconds then add grounded dal and fry continuously till it becomes thick (it takes 3-4 minutes).
4. Add salt, turmeric power, ajwain and Kalonji in it.
5.  Now stuffing is ready. Keep aside.

For outer layer:

1. Take a big ball. Put rice flour and salt in this.
2. Boil 1 liter water in a big pot.
3. Take 1 cup of boiled water and knead the rice flour, make dough similar to chapatti. (You can knead this into the food processor). That will be easy; kneading with hot water is difficult.
4. Make the lemon size ball with dough.
5. Grease your palm with oil and make a smooth bowl shape, fill the 2 spoon full of fillings in the dumpling bowl.
6. Fold carefully and close it.
7. Now shape this like egg.
8. Raw pittha is ready.

Method:

1. Boil the water and add 5-8 pittha in it, depending on your pot size.
2. Pittha should come up after few minutes, keep it to boil for another few minutes till it become slightly hard.
3. Check this with spoon or fork.
4. Take it out in the cold water pot; put it on the sieve, so that extra water drains out. Now pittha is ready to serve, garnish with fried green chilly.             

Pittha (rice roll or traditional Bihari dumpling) by Nag Ratna Sahu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.