CHAUL BARA [ଚାଉଳ ବରା]

In this country every city is identified either for a historical monument, for a temple, for a famous living personality or for a special kind of local culinary. When you think of Kolkata it reminds you of Rosgola;  think of Hyderabad it would be Biryani; think of Mumbai it is Vada paun; likewise when you talk about this little town  Barpali only one thing will pump your adrenal and that is Chaul Bara.

The gastronomy of Barpali goes synonym with its thriving agricultural economy.  For Rs.10/- you would be served a dana full of 20 pieces of these mouth-watering chaul bara.  So you can work out a unit of it cost you roughly 50 Paise. Could you imagine to get  anything else at such a cheaper price on this Earth, while the inflationary  index  is keep on soaring all time high.  It is a contemporary food, hence no need of tracing back to its origin.

If  you happens to be at Barpali, you will find the way-side cart-vendors selling chaul bara at every corner of the street. At Gandhi Chowk every evening there stands three push-carts who prepares the garma-garam(warm) chaul bara. These carts able to halt the traffic at the prime time of the business hours.

Chaul bara is a deep-fried Oriya snax  made of rice. Each of these are of one quarter of a table tennis ball size, with yellow in its appearance. Chaul bara is served along with mircha chatni (chilli) in a green leaf-bowl called dana.

For the students of the pharmacy college who stay away from their home, chaul bara is a thing that comes handy for the evening tiffin. At Barpali there would be more than a dozen  push-carts who sell these chaul bara, beside every tiffin stalls and the hotels. Each of these thela prepares chaul bara with 15 to 18 kgs of rice every day. So could you imagine its magnitude ? As per Gunanidhi Tandakar a Gudia by cast, every  day entire Barpali consumes 5 to 8 quintals of rice  in the form of chaul bara. However this author don’t recommend you to eat it out on the streets due to the poor hygienic conditions and the adulterated oil that is used to fry the chaul baras. Here is the recipe on how to prepare it at home.

THE RECIPE  :

Take 1 kg of usna  chaul and mix 100 gms of biri dali (urad dal or black gram) in it. Soak both of it in fresh water for three hours. Filter out the water and mince it in a grinder or mixer. You are advised to grind it in a thick form. You could mince it in a shila,  the hand operated stone crusher to get the best results. However you need to be from the old school to undertake this herculean task. In the dough add onion, garlic and ginzer  thinly crushed. Add a pinch of soda and 50 gms of besan in the thick dough to get the needed form and colour when fried.  Beside this add a spoon of juani and cumin seeds, which acts as a digestive enzyme.

When the oil is warm,  you need to put the dough in the oil with fingers. There is no modern tools or the machines to put it in oil. All this need hands-on experience to do it. However all the way you need to maintain the needed temperature of the oil to get the best form of the chaul baras. Let me share a secret with you.  To make your chaul bara crunchy and red, you need to fry it for the second time.

[a short video of making Chaul Bara]

In north India you are being served the bottled synthetic tomato or the chilli sauce with Samosa or the Singada. Whereas the best addendum for chaul bara is mircha chatni, which need only to be  hand prepared.  You need to soak tamarind in water and extract the juice. Crush green chilli, garlic and zinger together. Add this stuff to the tamarind-water along with  salt as per the needed  taste. A pinch of hing (asafoetida)  with few mint leafs would complete your venture.  

CAUTION : Finally a word of caution. The elderly and those with a poor appetite  are advised to abstain from this recipe as it’s a oily food.   
     

kiranbima@gmail.com  

E. KIRAN MOHAN

C\o. Dr. E. R. Rao (M.D.),

Tehsil Chowk,

At\PO - BARPALI - 768 029

Orissa, India

Cell # 91 99 371 20565