2013 - A new beginning and a resolution to keep.

Happy New Year to you!

May every great new day

Bring you sweet surprises...

A happiness buffet.

Happy New Year to you,

And when the new year’s done,

May the next year be even better,

Full of pleasure, joy and fun.

At the outset of this new year, I thought of trying out at least one Odiya recipe in my kitchen every week. Being at home these days, encourages me to try out new recipes and this time I wanted to focus on my own, my mother's own cuisine from an Odiya kitchen. Thats why the beginning of this blog and also a resolution to keep up with the One-Odiya-Dish-A Week regime.

Before starting out, I searched youtube and Wiki to see if there are videos and blogs with ONLY Odiya recipes. To my surprise, there are only a few, very few indeed. I would like to thank those who have taken out the time to write some interesting Odiya recipes. This blog will be purely for Odiya recipes from our very own Odiya kitchen and of course with lots of love from the land of Lord Jagannath whose history is rich with religion and culture.

I hope this blog helps all Odiyas who stay outside Odisha, India, stay in touch with the Odiya cuisine and encourage them to try out these recipes once in a while and remember the small yet wonderful Odiya kitchen of their mother's.

Starting out the blog with a song dedicated to Odisha which was posted on youtube - Odisha-Mo-Odisha

The Monday Dalma is an integral part of Odiya cuisine. It is a healthy mix of lentils and vegetables and is light yet full of necessary nutrients. Here goes a special way of making "Dalma" in one pot (Pressure Cooker in this case).

List of ingredients 

• 1 cup Moong daal (skin-on is better and healthier) dry roasted. Many people use other daals too like regular toor daal or chana daal also. You can combine 2 or 3 daals too. 
• 2-3 small egg-plants cut into halves 
• 1 small potato cubed (medium size cubes.. not very small) 
• 1 small pumpkin medium size cubed (if you get the pumpkin at the indian store, use 1/3rd of it which is 1/3rd of a Lb.. I think) 
• 7-8 green beans cut into 1 inch pieces 
• 1 small radish medium cubed 
• 1 carrot cut into 1 inch pieces 
• 2 small roma tomatoes chopped 
• 1 medium onion (optional .. if its Monday we usually skip it.. long story.. we try to eat satwik on Mondays) 
• 5-6 garlic chopped (Also optional..same reason as the onions) 
• 3-4 green chillies slit at length (A lot of people use dry red chillies too) 
• An inch or two of fresh ginger. 
• 1/2 cup of grated coconut 
• 2 tea spoons of home made cumin-chili powder (Dry roast 2-3 red chillies and 2 tbl spoons of cumin seeds until they are brown and super roasted --> Put them in a blender --> gggggrrrrrr ---> Home-made cumin-chili powder is ready) 
• 1 tea spoon ghee (during cooking) + 1 tea spoon ghee (after cooking) 
• 1 tea spoon jeera seeds for tempering 
• Salt and oil of course 

Procedure

• Heat ghee in a pressure cooker and add jeera seeds when ghee is hot. Let it splutter. 
• If using onions and garlic, this is the time to add them to the ghee. If not, then skip this step. 
• Add the green chillies next and then the tomatoes. 
• Grate ginger on top of the tomatoes and fry for a while. 
• Next goes in the grated coconut. 
• Now its the turn of the veggies. Everything must go except for the egg-plants. Reason? They are to be added later in the game because they tend to get mushy very very soon. 
• After the veggies are fried for like 4-5 minutes, in goes the daal(s) + salt + turmeric. 
• Little more frying here and then goes the egg-plants. 
• At the end, we add a cup of water, check the water level, it should not be more than an inch than the veggies level, taste the salt and then cover and pressure cook. 
• Phiissshhhhhh.....Phiissshhhhhh.....Phiissshhhhhh.....3 whistles are good enough for the dalma to be cooked nicely. 
• Let the pressure come down, then open the lid and add the rest of the ghee and the home made cumin-red chilly powder. 

Dalma is best served with plain white rice (Basmati preferred) with a hint of lemon and ghee. Yummy. We Odiyas also have it with roti and paratha or even puris. It essentially goes with everything.