Recipe

Daal Pitha
(दाल पीठा)

Recipe Contributed By: Anupriya Sinha, Pune

 Recipe Video

 Ingredients

Raw Rice flour – 2 cup
Water – 2 cup
Chana daal – 1 cup (soaked in water for 2-3 hrs)
Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
Garlic (peeled) – 7-8 cloves
Chilli powder - 1 tsp or as desired
Salt – as per taste
Oil – 1 tbsp for dough + as required for greasing steamer + 1 tbsp for seasoning
Mustard seeds – ½ tsp or as desired, for seasoning
Asafoetida - 1 pinch for seasoning
Red Chili - 1-2 for seasoning
Coriander leaves - 1 tbsp (coarsely chopped)
Green Chili - 1-2 or as desired (coarsely chopped)

 Method of Preparation

Mixed Daal:
1. Coarse grind the soaked chana daal and add salt, turmeric powder, 1 tsp cumin seeds, garlic and chilli powder. If it has excess water, you can heat the chana daal mixture in microwave for 1 minute. The resulting mixture should be such that you can fill it in the pithas easily, and should still be moist.

2. To prepare the pitha dough, boil 2 cups of water in a kadai, add salt and 1 tbsp oil.

3. Add rice flour to the boiling water slowly, stirring it continuously, so that there are no lumps. Cover and keep for 5 minutes.

4. Switch off flame and stir thoroughly. Gather the dough thus formed and knead it with oiled hands. Let cool.

5. Divide the dough into desired number of parts and make smooth balls.

6. Flatten each ball, with hands or by rolling, and fill the daal mixture.

7. Fold it to make gujiya like shape. Work the seam with oiled hands so as to get smooth edges.

8. Steam these pithas in a greased steamer till the daal filling gets cooked and knife comes out clean.

9. Take out the pithas from the steamer and serve hot.

10. For eating the leftover pithas, cut these pithas in tranverse sections of ¾ to 1 cm thick slices.

11. Before serving, you can either add a tadka of 1 tbsp oil and mustard seeds, asafoetida and red chilies, or simply stir fry the slices in 1 tbsp oil.

12. Garnish with green chilies and coriander leaves. Serve this with green chutney.

 Notes and Tips