Utkal · Eastern Coastal Plains
Three overlapping registers. The temple's abadha, which is the reference standard and is cooked without onion or garlic; the household kitchen of the delta, which is the same food with garlic and green chilli and more fish; and the street food of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, which is fast, sour and much later in origin. Fish and prawn are everyday rather than special — this is a lagoon and delta, and the vegetarian temple kitchen sits inside a thoroughly fish-eating country.
The Jagannath temple's cooked offering — rice, dals, vegetable preparations, khechedi, sweets and pithas running to dozens of items across the day's sequence. It is cooked in earthen pots, offered to the deity, then carried to the Bimala shrine and offered again, and only then is it mahaprasad. It is sold, not given, and it is eaten by strangers seated together from the same leaf.
Where to try: Ananda Bazar, inside the temple's outer enclosure at Puri.
Rice left under water overnight and eaten with its sour liquor, badi chura, a fried leafy green, fried fish and a raw onion. Basi pakhala is the fermented overnight form, saja is same-day, jira pakhala is tempered with cumin and curd. It is the summer meal and a matter of some regional pride.
Split pigeon pea cooked together with raw banana, pumpkin, papaya and colocasia rather than separately, and tempered with pancha phutana, cumin and dried chilli in ghee. A temple dish that became the household's everyday dal.
Mixed vegetables boiled with very little water and finished with raw mustard oil, garlic and green chilli — a deliberately underseasoned dish that exists as a counterweight to besara on the same plate.
Vegetables, or fish, in a ground-mustard sauce with garlic and turmeric. The sharpest thing on an ordinary Odia plate.
Rice and dal cooked together with ghee, black pepper and ginger, no onion or garlic. It is the principal cooked offering at Puri and, at home, the thing made when someone is unwell or when the day is a fast day.
Many vegetables cut small and cooked together with whole spices and a little coconut, made in quantity for festivals and for temple and community feeding.
Freshwater or lagoon fish in mustard sauce. Chilika's mullet, bhekti and khainga are the prized catches and the price shifts with the salinity of the lagoon in a given season.
Mud crab from the lagoon, cooked simply with mustard, garlic and turmeric, or roasted. Sold at the roadside at Barkul and Balugaon by weight and cooked while you wait.
Where to try: The stalls along the lagoon road at Balugaon and Barkul.
Prawn from the lagoon and the creeks, cooked with mustard or with potato and tomato in the plainer domestic version.
Grated elephant apple cooked down with jaggery and mustard tempering — sour, sweet and slightly resinous, served in a small quantity beside the main food rather than as a dish.
Urad dal fritters soaked in spiced curd, served with a spiced potato curry and a ghuguni ladle over them. Cuttack's own, eaten from breakfast onwards, and different from the northern dahi vada by the addition of the potato and the pea.
Where to try: The dahibara carts around Chandni Chowk and Buxi Bazar in Cuttack.
Fresh chhena kneaded with sugar and semolina, poured into a leaf-lined pan and baked slowly until the top and base caramelise. Credited to a sweet-maker at Nayagarh in the early twentieth century, which makes it among the youngest well-known sweets in India.
Chhena balls boiled in thin syrup, softer and less white than the Bengali version and traditionally cooked until the syrup caramelises slightly. Odisha Rasagola is registered as a geographical indication, and the claim rests on the Niladri Bije offering at the end of Ratha Jatra.
Where to try: The stalls at Pahala, on the road between Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.
Flattened chhena patties fried and steeped in thickened, cardamom-scented milk. Associated with the Baladevjew temple at Kendrapara, where it is an offering.
Layered wheat pastry fried and soaked in syrup, made dry enough to keep for days — which is precisely why it became the sweet a pilgrim carries home. A standing offering at Puri.
A fermented rice-and-black-gram batter with a coconut and jaggery filling, steamed inside a fresh turmeric leaf. Made for Prathamastami, for the eldest child of the house.
Staples
Sweets
Street food
Drinks
The food of Utkal — signature dishes, staples, sweets, street food and where to eat them. (17)