Friday 4 December 2015

"Enduri Pitha" preparation process in Ancient Odisha

Friends,
This blogs tells about the preparation process of "EnDuri Pitha" in ancient Odisha.
"EnDuri Pitha" is a type of cake like item prepared from rice batter and stuffing inside it.

1 - Rice & black gram batter is kept on KadaLi Patra (Banana Leaf) or HaLadi Patra (Turmeric Leaf) and some stuffing prepared from black gram, jaggery, black pepper, chena, coconut, sugar is kept on it.
2 - The leaf is folded in the form of a packet so that it will hold the batter and stuffing tight.
3 - Then a pot like thing (PAchiA) prepared from bamboo is taken. It has some pores on its base and the top portion is open.
 4 - The packets containing the batter and stuffing, are placed inside it and then covered by cloth and the top portion is closed by a cover prepared from bamboo.
5 - Then it is kept on a clay pot with water and the water is boiled. 
With the temperature generated by the steam, the "EnDuri Pitha" gets prepared and looks like this.
EnDuri Pitha - Pic Source: Wikipedia
You need to remove the leaves and get the EnDuri out of it.  

Now-a-days, people use the aluminum frame (used for Idly preparation) to prepare the EnDuri Pitha.
It can be told that Idly is a variant of EnDuri Pitha. The two differences are that Enduri was prepared using old methods, but Idly is prepared using modern methods & the shape of Enduri is long but the shape of Idly is round.
This food item(Enduri Pitha) is prepared in Odisha mostly during the festival of "Prathamastami". 

Idly which is famous in southern part of India, is also famous in Odisha as well and the reason might be "All are rice-producing states". And...No one can deny the huge cultural similarities between Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu and Karnataka. 
No one knows how the word "EnDuri" was originated.
Many people call it as "InDuri" as well.
The name of the country "InDonesia" somewhat matches with "InDuri".
Many people in southern states also believe that the rice-batter baking technology was developed during the maritime business of Kalingas, Pandyas & Cholas with Indonesia.
There is a peculiar link with Maharastra. In Maharastra, people from PuNe are called PuNeri. No other place people have similar naming convention. 
Marathi language and Marathi words has huge similarity with Odia language and Odia words.

Cheers
Ashish




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