Chhabila Shri Jagannatha... And Aarisa Pitha

While cleaning up the book shelf I found a very interesting and pictorial book about Lord Shri Jagannatha. The book is named "Chhabila Shri Jagannatha"(Meaning Shri Jagannatha with pictures). Everyone who ever studied Odiya either at school or home (like me and my sister) knows the importance of the "Chhabila" series. 

To refresh your memory... remember the thin book called "Chhabila Barnabodha"(Meaning Odiya Letters with pictures) with a cat's picture on the cover page? This book taught us the basics of Odiya language like the letters and small words.

The very first story in the book is the story of how Shri Jagannatha came into being. I found the story a nice reading to kids who are eager to learn about the lord. So here goes the story and then the recipe (with step by step process) for my fourth attempt or the very favorite of all times The "Aarisa Pitha".

This is to story of a time very long long time ago. The era was the time when the battle of Mahabharat had just finished. One fine day, Shri Krishna was resting in the jungle on the soft branches of a climber (Siyaali Lataa). A villager (jungle man) called Jaara mistook Shri Krishna's feet as the ear of a deer and shot his arrow. Due to this arrow, Shri Krishna left his body (in simple terms "died"). His body was then cremated as per Hindu rituals. Surprisingly, his naval did not burn out. So it was taken and offered to the ocean. Inside the ocean, his naval turned into a bright blue precious stone and shone ever so brightly. 

Jaara's son whose name was Biswabasu found this stone and kept it in a small & secret cave and started worshipping the stone as "Neela Maadhava"(The blue lord). The village name where this cave was located is known as "Kantilo". I think this village exists today also but there is no "Neela Maadhava" there. 

The story progresses as follow...the days and nights passed... due to the presence of the lord in this village, everyone from this village went to heaven after their death. This fact shook "Yam Raaj" who was the owner of hell. He went to Lord Vishnu and narrated his problem. {Lord Vishnu is the whole sole owner of the world... we can call him by any name.. Krishna.. Ram.. Jagannatha... but at the end.. he is the only one lord that matters}. "Neela Maadhava" was also a form of Lord Vishnu. After hearing Yam Raaj's prayers, Lord Vishnu promised that he will go away from that place soon.

Mean time on earth, King Indradyumna wished to get "Neela Maadhava" to his palace and worship him. He was of course smitten by the stories and "Mahima" of the lord. But then, he had no idea about the location of the lord since Biswabasu had kept him in a secret cave in Kantilo. So he sent his detective whose name was Vidyapati, to find out the location. Vidyapati was to marry Biswabasu's daughter Lalita. So he took advantage of the situation and asked Lalita to show him the blue lord. Lalita knew that she was not supposed to show the path to anyone. So she blindfolded Vidyapati and took him to the lord. Vidyapati was way too smarter than Lalita. Even though he was blindfolded, he carried a sack of mustard seeds and made a hole in the sack. The mustard seeds kept falling on the way to the lord. Vidyapati worshipped the lord and came back. 

He then informed the king about the mustard seeds story and told that, if the kinsmen followed the path of the mustard plants with yellow flowers, they will find the lord. The king did the exact same thing and reached the cave. To his surprise, the cave was there but the lord was not there. Lord Neela Maadhava had vanished. The king got a heavenly message which stated that the lord will come back to the king, but he has to create Idols using the big trunks of trees that will be floating on the sea-shore of Baanki. Baanki is a city's name in Odisha which has a lot of religious history. 

The king asked his carpenters to start building the idols, but none of the royal carpenters were able to even cut through the trunks. A very old man came to the king and said that he would like to make the idols. This old man was none other than Lord Brahma (The creator of this earth). He was of course in disguise so that no one will ever recognize him. He said, he needs 21 days alone with his equipments and the tress trunks and after 21 days he will deliver the idols to the king. The king agreed and the idol making started. After 15 days, suddenly the room in which Lord Brahma was building the idols became silent. No sound came from the room. Queen Gundicha got worried and requested to open the room and see if the old man is ok. The moment the door was opened, everyone was surprised to see no old man in the room. The idols were there though. No one knows if this was meant to be, but many say that the idols were incomplete. There were total 4 idols. Two of them had half hands along with the face & body, no legs. One of them had just the face & body and no hands or legs. The last one was just a cylindrical piece of wood with no face at all. The first three idols were  named "Jagannatha", "Balabhadra" and "Shubhadra" and the cylindrical piece of wood was named "Sudarshan". All the four idols were worshiped in the King's temple and today also all four are worshipped together in the Puri temple. This is how the idol of Lord Jagannatha and his brother and sister came into being. 

Now to the recipe of ...Aarisa Pitha. {Aarisa Pitha is an important item in the 56 bhog items served to Lord Jagannatha every day in the Puri temple}

Ingredients

• 1 cup basmati rice
• 1 cup heaped jaggery
• 1 teaspoon ghee
• Oil/Ghee for deep frying

Procedure

• Soak rice in enough water for 2 - 3 hours
• Drain the rice and then place it on 3 or 4 layered tissue paper so as to get rid of the extra water
• If needed (was needed in my case), dab the rice with extra tissue paper and make sure that water is almost gone. The rice will be shiny at this point. It will still be soaked in water and soft in texture.
• Now dry grind this rice into a sandy textured mixture. I would not suggest to use the store bought rice flour, because that is too good for this recipe. Its too much polished and we need sandy rice flour for Aarisa Pitha.
• Spread the rice flour in a plate and leave it for 5 mins to dry out a bit.

• Now its time to start making the dough ("Pitha Khali"). Heat a wide mouth shallow pan or an Indian kadhai is idle for this job on Lo- Medium heat (setting 4 on the big burner)
• When the pan is more than warm, add a week bit of ghee and jaggery and start mixing them with a spatula. Using a non-stick pan helps a lot here. Mix the jaggery mix, until all the lumps have dissolved and the mixture starts boiling.
• This mixture needs to boil nicely and come to a thick gravy consistency. 
• I am not that experienced to just look at the mixture and decide if its ready or not. So I use another method. Take a small bowl of cold water. Using the spatula, pick a little bit of the jaggery mix and drop into the water. The jaggery will coagulate. Use your fingers to slightly oick the jaggery from the water and rub lightly. If the jaggery becomes like a small candy when you touch it with your hands, the jaggery mix is ready. If not, then give it some more time.
• A cup of jaggery took around 12- 14 mins on setting 3 on my electric burner. If you have less time, then you may increase the heat but then there is a risk of jaggery burning out. So please be careful.
• When the jaggery is ready, add the rice flour batch by batch and rigorously mix them both. Towards the end, the dough will be soft when touched with the spatula but stiff enough to be held in hands. Make sure the raw rice smell goes away. This all happens in low heat setting (#3 on the big burner).
• Once the dough is ready, spread it on a plate and let it cool. Be very careful not to touch the dough with bare hands when its just out of the pan. It is indeed very very hot.

• Once cool, make small flat discs out of the dough and deep fry in medium hot oil. Do not use very hot oil, else the dough won't get cooked. Frying the pitha in medium hot oil helps to cook the dough and also gives the pitha a crispy exterior.

• To make it fancy, I have seen some people roll the flat discs in sesame seeds and then fry it. This enhances the taste of the pitha as well the look. I did not have sesame seeds at home, so could not do that. You are most welcome to try.

The Aarisa Pitha, stays outside for almost a week or so but in an air-tght container. You can also store the dough in the fridge for a week. Enjoy this pitha and let me know how it turned out for you !!