Poda pitha

Poda Pitha is associated with Odisha’s Raja festival. Sujata Satpathy’s contributed recipe uses a pressure cooker to make a rice-and-black-gram cake, alongside the publisher’s account of an older chullah preparation.

The mixture includes both grated coconut and thin coconut slices, sugar, chopped ginger, broken cashews, salt and baking powder. This version selects cooking oil for greasing the cooker.

Rice and skinned black gram are soaked separately and washed. The black gram is ground with water to a fine batter, while the rice batter is kept coarser; the two are then combined.

The coconut, ginger, sugar, cashews, salt and baking powder are mixed into the batters. The covered mixture is left to ferment before being poured into a preheated cooker whose inner surface has been lightly oiled.

The cooker is closed without its whistle weight and kept over a low flame. Once the cooker returns to normal temperature, the pitha is removed carefully, cut into shapes and served.