Traditional Odia Vegetable Besara in Mustard Paste

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Puri, Odisha, Shree Jagannath Temple. All three play a major role in the choice of recipe for this post. Further, this is the title of the section of the book ‘Bhagwaan Ke Pakwaan‘, that set me on the path to making this really tasty curry, an authentic and traditional Odia Vegetable Besara: mixed vegetables cooked in Orissa cuisine’s trademark mustard paste.

This month, the theme for the Shhh Cooking Secretly Challenge Group is ‘Odisha Cusine’. While browsing my little collection of Indian cookbooks including Laxmi Parida’s Purba: Feasts from the East, I came across several recipes which looked easy to make and would surely taste delicious with the spices such as panch phutana traditionally used in Odia cuisine. However, none of them really caught my imagination. I wanted to showcase the vast cuisine of this Eastern Indian State, with a vegetarian recipe using some of the processes and ingredients which best represented the cuisine. There being a wide overlap with Bengali vegetarian dishes, the one I selected had to stand out and be clearly identifiable with Odisha.

About Bhagwaan Ke Pakwaan

Idly turning over the pages of Bhagwaan ke Pakwaan – Food of the Gods, by Varud Gupta and Devang Singh, I finally found just what I wanted. This food cum travel book was gifted to me by my friend Sachin Arya. Sachin is himself a foodie, and knows how much I am obsessed with food preparation.

The book has chronicled the visit of the authors to 5 places in India, and their take on the culture, history, folk lore and religious practices in these places, with a focus on the prasad or food offered to the Gods (not forgetting tribal deities). The photographs feel very real, you could almost be in the kitchens where these feasts are being prepared!

 

What is Besara/ Besar?

The recipe below is adapted from the one for Besar. Besar is a mixed vegetable curry cooked in mustard paste. It forms one of the 56 dishes offered as Mahaprasad or Chhappan Bhog, to the main deity of the Puri Shree Jagannath Temple in Odisha. The authors of the book had actually been into the Temple kitchens, observed and described in detail the process of making the Besar.

A little more, about the Besara. The cookbook Purba: Feasts from the East , by Laxmi Parida, says that, “… in Oriya cooking … mustard oil is often stirred in after the dish has been cooked, to impart the flavour of the mustard oil. Besara is a class of dishes that uses this technique. Sometimes, the use of mustard seeds in the sauce is enough to classify it as besara. Almost any vegetable can be made in this style -fish goes very well with this sauce.”

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Making a Traditional Odia Vegetable Besara

The ingredients for the mixed Vegetable Besara are those usually found in Indian kitchens and include seasonally available vegetables. As this recipe follows that of the Puri temple, authenticity is maintained by selecting only desi vegetables – raw green banana, colocasia (arbi), pumpkin, pointed gourd (parwal), yam, drumstick etc. You can use some or all of these as you prefer. Cauliflower, capsicum, potato,  tomato, raw papaya and other imports, please excuse!

For the same reason of authenticity, the vegetables are cooked in ghee, and onion and garlic are not added. The mustard paste gives its special East Indian flavour, while no chilies and chili powder are included. The curry is tempered with panch phoron/ panch phutana, the 5 spice mix which is a popular tempering in curries from Odia and Bengali cuisine. Fried badi/ nadi, the little black gram lentil fritters, add a bit of crunch to the dish.

 

My partner in the Shhh Secretly Cooking Challenge this month, is the multi faceted Seema Doriasamy Iyer. We discussed possible dishes and ingredients at length, and decided on traditional Indian ingredients commonly used in Odiya cusine. Seema suggested Parwal (Pointed Gourd) and Haldi (Turmeric Powder), both of which fit nicely into the Traditional Odia Vegetable Besara.

I don’t know about you, but I like Parwal (or Potol/ Potala) only as the Bharwan Parwal or spice stuffed sauteed pointed gourd. I make this from this recipe on this blog, stuffing the parwal with a special homemade spice mix from my mother’s recipe. The traditional Aloo Parwal Sabzi, with slices of potato and parwal sauteed in garam masala, turmeric and curry powder is not a great favourite and I tend to eat the potato slices and ignore the gourd.

The Besar I prepared for this post though, was full of flavour. The vegetables were cooked through but with just a bit of a bite, not soggy or overdone as would have happened if I had used a pressure cooker or instant pot.

Mahaprasad At Puri Shree Jagannath Temple

Reading up and researching for this post on the traditional Odia vegetable besara led me to vivid descriptions of the Chhappan Bhog or 56 course Mahaprasad offered to the deities every day at the Puri Jagannath Temple and distributed to the throngs of worshippers. Much has been written elsewhere about the huge kitchens where food is prepared in large clay pots and can cater to a lakh of devotees every day. The clay pots are stacked one upon the other (9 on one firewood oven) and the food is slow-cooked, steamed.

I’m sharing with you an interesting (if lengthy) article on the legends and myths surrounding the construction of the Lord Jagannath Temple, here and another here on the Mahaprasad, which you may also enjoy going through. I have been to Puri and the Temple many years ago, but after reading all this, I want to really explore it in the light of its history and architecture, pay my respects to the deities as well as taste for myself, the Mahaprasad at the Ananda Bazaar where it is available for devotees and visitors.

As I mentioned earlier, my partner for the Odisha theme in Shhh Cooking Secretly Challenge FB Group is Seema Doriswamy Sriram, who blogs at Mildly Indian. I love her blog with recipes from India’s Malabar region, other Indian recipes and those from different  cuisines which she has made during her travels to various parts of the world. I hope you will spare a few minutes to visit it. For Seema, I suggested lentils and mustard, and she used these in a

traditional Odia Dalma with drumsticks. She said her family really enjoyed it in the cold climate that she presently lives in. The Dalma perfectly matches the Vegetable Besara I have made, and here is Seema’s recipe for the same: Winter Perfect Lentil Stew, Dalma.

This post is sent to the event Shhh Cooking Secretly Challenge for the theme: Odissa Cuisine for May 2019.

Other traditional recipes you may like on this Blog:

Raw Banana Varutha Erissery with Roasted Coconut

Amti Dal with Goda Masala and Kokum

Matar ka Nimona- spiced Green pea curry

 

 

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