00:00 I'm Jasper. Half Irish, half English and I own Pizzeria. In India.
00:28 I'm crazy about India and I'm crazy about pizza and we're arranging their marriage.
00:34 Welcome to the Great Indian Pizza Adventure.
00:42 Orissa, land of myth and mysteries and apparently India's best kept secret. But we've got a
00:55 plan. We're going to use the universal passport of this pizza to get to know this incredible
01:01 state and to unlock its culinary secrets. Welcome to the Great Indian Pizza Adventure.
01:11 Orissa has always been known for its temples, culture, heritage and incredible cuisine.
01:18 A cuisine that's diverse, rich and covers a huge spectrum. And they tell me Lord Jagannath
01:28 is absolutely central to the faith of Orissa. So here I am starting my journey with a visit
01:34 to the beautiful Jagannath Temple to seek his blessings and support in my endeavors.
01:48 Where there's a temple, there has to be Prasad and my visit would be totally incomplete if
01:54 I didn't partake.
02:05 Blessings taken, time to jump into the food. Ori Bong, a restaurant in the heart of Gagauan
02:11 is every Ori a food lover's delight. And the person behind it, Subhana.
02:18 Subhana, thank you so much for inviting me here. It's wonderful. I can see, I'm looking
02:25 at this Ori Bong, right? And I'm looking at half Orissa and half Bengal, right?
02:31 Yeah. Yes.
02:32 But you're all, you're all Orissa as a woman, right? You're a daughter of Orissa.
02:38 Everybody talks about Bengali cuisine, but nobody talks about Ori a food.
02:43 So we're going, we're diving straight into the heart of...
02:46 Yes. Dahi bara aloo dum is not a food. It's not a staple food as everybody out there say.
02:54 It's an emotion for each and every Ori out there.
02:56 I'll make it for you. I've just kept it like this so that you understand. This is dahi,
03:02 dahi is yogurt and bara. Bara is a lentil based fritters. We will top it up with a super
03:10 spicy aloo dum. And then we have a separate spicy yogurt only. So we can add more.
03:17 I see, to extinguish the flame.
03:19 Yes. And then we have little onions and little namkeen and little chilli.
03:26 Boy, that's good. It's good and it's clever. It's clever because these lentils are light.
03:44 They're light as a feather, right? Yeah. I can see why it's an emotion. It's delicious.
03:50 I could eat this all day, but I'm going to have to pause. What's next?
03:54 Subhana, amazing. It looks like the most beautiful face of a clock. What's happening here?
04:00 These are seven, eight dishes which is cooked without onion, garlic and with ghee. I can
04:08 serve you. Thank you.
04:09 A bit. And you'll have to use your hands.
04:13 Okay, perfect.
04:18 This is sweet. Okay.
04:20 This is one type of spinach. It does look amazing. And this fellow?
04:25 This is called besara. This is dal, but this dal tastes sweet.
04:34 Okay. It's so beautiful looking. And some chutney.
04:38 This is chutney. Tomato.
04:40 Tomato chutney. So just take a little bit of, take a bit of,
04:44 so this one here, take a bit of this and this. It's also very, versus some North Indian food,
04:53 it's very light. It's very light.
04:59 I'm a non-veg guy really, but if I ate food like this, I might be tempted to become vegetarian.
05:06 And these are classics, right? Dalma. I mean, if people know about Arisan food, they know
05:11 about these. Yeah.
05:12 The first thing, the first thing about any Odia cuisine is dalma.
05:17 Really good. Okay. So I need to pace myself a little bit.
05:22 You can. What's next on the agenda?
05:26 Subhana, have you invited 20 other people? No.
05:31 So who's this for? I'm just trying to compensate my cravings
05:34 for serving Odia food because I've been given a chance today to do that.
05:38 I think you've compensated and more and more. Okay. So should we try a bit of this?
05:45 This is Pui Chingri. This is crab curry. Yeah.
05:50 Very Odia style crab curry. This is mutton kosa. This is, we called Chingri
05:56 aloo jhol, which is prawn and potatoes. And this is machha besara, which is, you had
06:04 besara right now. The same spices, but used for cooking fish.
06:11 This is bori chuda, which is lentil-based fritters, fried and mashed. It's a side dish.
06:20 And this is doi pachadi, which is again a sweet side, just in case you feel a little
06:27 spicy. And this is the small fish, duly marinated
06:31 and burnt. So you can have a bite of that. Okay.
06:36 Here's an important difference with some other cuisines, like Bengali. I can eat this in
06:42 whichever order I want, right? Here are the prawns.
06:46 Orissa is one state where you'll find all the seafoods and the fishes at one place.
06:53 And people like mutton in Orissa? Yes, they do.
07:14 It's just different. Right.
07:17 It's different. Chupana, this is fantastic. It's making me think how I use this if I want
07:23 to make some Orissa pizza. How do I use this? And many of these gravies make a good base
07:28 also. Some sourdough bread, some gravies, some toppings.
07:33 Clam meat and prawn together with spices. Made in heaven.
07:38 What's next, Chupana? Sweet dish.
07:40 Finish off with some sweets? Yeah.
07:42 Okay, I'm ready. You can start with rasogolla.
07:45 Take a bite? Yes.
07:50 This is called chena poda. That was brilliant. Thank you so much.
07:55 Thank you so much for taking interest in Oriya food.
07:59 It's easy to take interest in this. It really is wonderful.
08:03 Now that's what I call some really authentic Oriya tastes. Now my journey continues. Next
08:10 stop to meet Shweta Mohapatra, a culinary expert who'll give me a bird's eye view of
08:18 the entire state of Orissa. Shweta, welcome to the Great Indian Pizza
08:23 Adventure. We're delighted to have you here. Thank you for having me here.
08:27 It's our great pleasure. What's your thought process when you help people to understand
08:32 this extraordinarily interesting and subtle cuisine of Orissa?
08:36 Yeah, so I think there's a lot of diversity in Oriya food because there is a lot of physical
08:43 diversity in the state. So we have the coastline, we have the mountains, we have the ponds where
08:48 a lot of fish is there. And it's also influenced by the borders. So there is Chhattisgarh,
08:54 there is West Bengal border, then there is the Andhra and the Telangana borders. So our
09:00 food has always been influenced by all these people, but obviously it has its own identity.
09:07 And I think Oriya food is very subtle and there's a lot of importance given to vegetables.
09:12 A lot of seafood is also there because of the coasters. And not just seafood, even fresh
09:18 water produce, you know, like the fish of ponds and lakes are very popular in Orissa.
09:26 So from a cultural perspective, where does food stand in the Oriyan culture? Is it very
09:34 central? Is it occasion driven? You know, some places you go to, food is hugely central.
09:40 Yes, yes. Where is Orissa on that spectrum? So Oriya food is very central to the culture.
09:44 So in Orissa we have this thing called 'Bara Masa Tera Parba' which means 12 months and
09:50 13 occasions. So in a year we have 13 reasons to celebrate and for all of this there is
09:55 some specific food that is cooked and that's important. Shweta, when you get more specific
10:01 into particular dishes or particular categories, so for example, if I take, and we're thinking
10:07 about pizza, if I say baking, baking doesn't seem to be a thing in Orissa, is that right?
10:12 Okay, so we have for example at least two dishes that are baked. One is the 'Podo Pitha'
10:22 and the other is the 'Chhena Podo'. The one that's burnt slightly on the outside?
10:27 Yeah, so one is sort of like a cheesecake, a dense cheesecake, you know, and it is slightly
10:34 charred outside and the other one is a cake, a rice cake.
10:38 So another sort of fundamental part of pizza making, cheese. Talk to us about cheese in
10:45 Orissa. Is that a thing or not a thing? Cheese, there has been evidence that cheese
10:51 was used as far as from 12th century on, but primarily to make sweets.
10:58 Okay, I mean we could talk all day about this, but I have to ask you a kind of key question
11:05 and I haven't formulated it in my mind yet, but do you think there's such a thing as an
11:10 Oria pizza? Why not?
11:12 I haven't heard of it. Maybe it will be a first.
11:15 It will be. Of some sort. You and I can go to the state
11:20 capital and unveil our Oria pizza. Why not?
11:25 Shweta, honestly, thank you so much. I know that's a tiny amount of knowledge for you,
11:30 but it's a huge amount of knowledge for me and I really appreciate it.
11:33 Thank you so much for having me. Delighted, thanks.
11:35 Thank you. It's a beautiful evening in Delhi, sun's coming
11:42 down. I started the day getting some blessings from Lord Jagannath, then went to Ori Bong,
11:49 then to Shweta, and here we are at a wonderful Orissa street food stall. We're going to line
11:56 up some snacks, get some inspiration, see what works with pizza, what doesn't work with
12:01 pizza. Basically, a perfect end to a perfect day.
12:08 Okay. That's really good.
12:15 That's really good. Sort of salty.
12:22 Okay. It's a solid number. It definitely needs a bit of a mix, this. This is a dipper. When
12:29 you eat it on its own, it's going to be so nice.
12:41 And here or not? Okay.
12:48 That is good. So, is it good? So, it weighs a lot. Here? Okay. Basically, everything is
12:55 a dipper, a big dipper.
13:09 Okay.
13:10 So, it's a big dipper.
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