Made something new-to-me today for a friend’s dad.
It’s a dumpling that’s a regional specialty of the state of Bihar, India, called Dal Pitha – aka a Pitha stuffed with Dal, ie lentils.
This was pretty laborious, even though each individual step isn’t hard or unfamiliar. A rice flour dough first, cooked from batter. Then the filling, which is soaked lentils (chana dal and/or tuvar / arhar dal) ground uncooked with aromatics and spices, then sauteed until it’s cooked and crumbly.
The dal mixture is then stuffed into the rice flour dough (and shaped in a specific way), and finally that’s steamed to finish.
Well, the first time you make something, you learn everything that can go wrong 
. The main problem in this one (aside from a very crumbly filling) is that the dough apparently cracks while steaming. Ugh. After despairing on the first batch, I realized I might be able to “stick” the cracks back together while the things are still warm, so I tried that with the subsequent batches.
I think my issue was that I tried to make them too thin, the way similar dumplings from western regions are made. Looking at pics on various blogs, the Bihari coating is much thicker than what I was attempting. Or maybe it had something to with the dough texture. Will do some youtube investigating later.
Anyway, I know he’ll appreciate them (even though they’re pretty ugly to my eye) because Bihari food is not commercially available around these parts.
