Bihari Litti

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Submitted by: Ranjana Lal, Dallas, TX (U.S.A.)

Ingredients:

For atta (flour) dough:

• All purpose flour or whole wheat atta - 1½ cup. Littis are more crunchy if made with all purpose flour (maida)
• ¾ to 1 cup regular or fat-free yogurt (dahi)

Make dough from atta using yogurt and NOT water. The dough should be soft and fully kneaded. Keep aside covered.

For filling :

• 1 cup sattu (a special gram flour)
• 2 or more green chilies, finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 inch ginger, finely chopped
• ½ cup fresh dhaniya (cilantro) leaves, finely chopped
• ½ tsp. mangrella (nigella or onion seed)
• 1 tsp. ajwain (thyme)
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Salt to taste
• 2 tblsp. mustard (in USA, you can get this in any Indian Grocery Store) or olive oil
• 1 or 2 tblsp. mircha achar masala (fillings from the red chili pickle)

Mix all the filling ingredients with sattu together nicely. Add ¼ to ½ cup water to make the stuffing moist and easy to fill.

Now make 8 balls from the atta (flour) dough. Dust each ball with dry atta and make a patty roughly 2.5" to 3" diameter in size with hand. You don't need a belan (rolling pin) for this. Stuff 2 to 3 tsp. sattu filling in the center of the patty and close it from all sides. When all the littis are stuffed, pre-heat the oven to 375 F and put all the litties on a foil and bake till one side is brown or black spots come on the litti surface. Then turn over the litti and bake for few more minutes until that side is brown as well. Take out and dip in pure ghee or butter and serve with achar or dhaniya (cilantro) chutney and/or baigan ka bhurta (mashed and prepared egg-plant).

Enjoy!

Addendum: Sept. 01, 2002

Editor's note: Udayan Dayal, place unknown, recently wrote to us that like rest of the Biharis' he also loves litti but added that in "pure" bihari version of litti, the dough (atta) is not prepared using curd/yogurt (dahi) but just plain water and likes the sour taste to come in form of some chutney.

Either way, both versions are delicious, as far as we are concerned!!

Addendum: Feb. 17, 2003

Mrs. Ranjana Lal, the submitter of the above recipe, wrote:

"Regarding your addendum of Sep. 1, 2002, I never submitted my litti as true Bihari litti.

A true Bihari litti dough is prepared with water but a lot of oil is also used for moin. Also it is not baked in oven. Since everybody is diet conscious today and want to avoid extra fat whenever they can, I used fat-free dahi after a lot of trial. Even day before yesterday I had a litti party with 4 Bihari family from Patna and everybody loved it. Everyone ate more because it was made with no fat and it was their choice whether they wanted to put ghee on it or not. Had made more than 50 littis and all was finished.

So I just wanted to clarify that I never submitted my recipe as TRUE BIHARI LITTI. Over here in the USA we try to adjust with present time and keep eating our traditional food also.

Editor's note: Thank you Mrs. Lal for taking time to clarify. Either way, your recipe is simply great as many of our visitors have written to us. The recipe was also copied and printed in the last year's brochure of Holi party organized by the Bihar Association of North America based in New Jersey. Needless to say, it was a hit.

For what it's worth, this page remains in the top-10 most accessed page of PatnaDaily.Com.

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