Excerpted and only lightly modified from: Sweta Biswal, Beyond Dalma: A Holistic Foray into Odia Food. Bangalore: Notion Press, 2024.
My first tryst with this pitha dates back to school days. Our neighbours, who were originally from Cuttack, shared this gossamer like pitha along with other Rajaw delicacies every year. I was fascinated by this dish that literally melted in the mouth at the very first bite. Being an inquisitive child, I gathered that it was a dish that was primarily made in Karana households during Rajaw and employed a rather interesting technique.
This was just enough information for a ten-year-old to comprehend and retain. It would take a little more than a decade for me to fully appreciate the beauty of this pitha. A bunch of ‘doob’ grass tied at one end, dipped in a thin rice batter and used as a brush to draw a cross on a skillet, this pitha is a rare example of culinary artistry. Such finesse is usually the hallmark of the upper echelons of society where food no longer revolves around subsistence and has progressed towards being a vehicle of pleasure.
Sometime back in 2014, I was replicating it in my own kitchen under the guidance of my mother-in-law, using a recipe I had picked from a fellow blogger. While reminiscing about Rajaw, she narrated an episode from her childhood days. Her grandmother would draw the outline of a circle and then proceed to sprinkle just enough batter to fill it up. All this was done using one’s fingers. The stuffing would be placed at the centre and the sides were folded over to a neat parcel. While my mother-in-law has given up this technique in favour of the ‘cross and fold’ method, she did retain the memory of cooking it alongside her grandmother.
It took a lot more digging over the years to understand more about this beautifully named pitha. And even then, I encountered two distinct yet plausible versions. The ‘Chunchipatra’, meaning ‘needle-leaf’, draws its name from a bunch of leaves (usually ones having nutraceutical properties) that were tied at one end and sliced into fine needle likeness using a cutting device called ‘paniki’. This was employed as a brush to prepare the pitha mainly in the Karana households.
But in the Brahmin households, due to the restrictions imposed on the women, foraging such leaves was quite impossible. So, the sprinkling (‘chinchiba’ in Odia) method was employed to prepare this pitha. Over time, the caste distinctions broke down and these two recipes merged into one. Being the easier one among the two, the cross and fold method gained traction and today, almost everyone uses this method. But sadly, the leaves, or even the grass, have been replaced by a piece of clean muslin cloth.
The two main tricks in getting chunchipatra pitha right are really making the batter thin enough (almost watery) and fashioning the doob grass into an effective enough paintbrush to spread said batter quickly and thinly–really it’s a shaking and a sprinkling in much the manner of the sprinkling of the rice flour batter on the inverted kadais that make Andhra’s famous pootharekalu: it’s one pat, and remove. But then also–if you’ve made dosas you know this–the tava (or inverted kadai) has to be hot enough and greased enough to prevent sticking but not so greasy as will keep the rice batter from initially adhering.
Chunchipatra Pitha
Ingredients
- 1 cup aromatic raw rice
- A pinch of salt
- 2 teaspoons ghee
- ½ cup jaggery or to taste
- 1 cup freshly grated coconut
- 2-3 cardamom pods, shelled and powdered
- 1 small bunch of arugampul/doob/durva grass; substitute with a thin handkerchief if the grass is unavailable.
Instructions
- Soak the rice for 2-3 hours, drain, and grind it with clean water into a smooth, thin batter. While grinding, add water ½ cup at a time to ensure that the rice grinds smoothly, and then thin the batter until it’s easily pourable, almost watery. Use about 2 cups of water total.
- Add salt, and set the batter aside.
- Prepare the filling by heating the ghee in a small pan, adding the jaggery (and mashing with the back of a wooden spoon until it’s dissolved) and then the coconut. Mix well and let this cook for a minute or two. Switch off the flame, and add the cardamom powder.
- Prepare the grass “brush” by tying the bunch together with some string and then trimming one end to form an even brush. Dip it into the rice batter to mix while you heat the tava.
- You can use a cheesecloth or thin handkerchief as a substitute for the grass: fold it to a width that you want so that you can dip in the batter and lift out straight to place and run over the tava. Don’t crumple it.
- Now heat a tava or other cast iron pan. Don’t grease it too much or the batter will slide and not stick as you spread it. If there’s too much grease, wipe it with a clean cloth.
- When the pan is hot but not smoking, use the grass to paint a criss-cross on the hot surface. It may take you a few tries to get this right, and do try not to paint over areas repeatedly or the resulting pitha will become too thick. Return the grass to the batter bowl.
- If you’re using a handkerchief, lift it straight out of the batter and slide it in the same criss-cross patten on the hot surface. Return the cloth to the batter bowl.
- The pitha’s edges will curl upwards slightly. Now put a spoonful or more of the filling in the center of the pitha and use the ends to fold into a square.
- Lift the pitha off the tava with a spatula and repeat with the remaining batter and filling.
- Serve these pithas hot, when they’re still nice and crunchy and the filling is warm and soaking through!
