Tekeli Pitha

Tekeli pitha is an Assamese pitha made by steaming rice flour. Coconut or jaggery is layered between portions of moistened rice flour, and the whole is wrapped in cloth and steamed. The warm, steamed layers of rice are eaten together with the sweet filling inside.

Steaming moist rice flour

In one home example, soaked rice is drained and ground, and water is added to the flour a little at a time. The flour is moistened just enough to hold together when squeezed, taking care not to pack it too firmly. A damp cloth is laid over the lid of a kettle, rice flour is spread on it, coconut and jaggery are placed on top, and more rice flour is layered over them. The cloth is then wrapped around the layers, and the pitha is cooked in the steam from boiling water. Not pressing the flour down too hard is the trick to a fluffy result.

Pots, kettles and strainers

Some explanations distinguish tekeli pitha, made with an earthenware vessel, from ketli pitha, made with a kettle. Home recipes give both names side by side, and the correspondence between utensils and names also varies. Compared with til pitha, in which a rice sheet is cooked on an iron griddle and rolled, its distinctive feature is that steam binds the rice flour together. In one example presented by India’s Central Rice Research Institute, a cotton cloth is laid in a small strainer, moist flour and filling are layered on it, and the strainer is set over a vessel of boiling water. Once steamed, the pitha is turned out onto a plate and served with ghee while still warm.

In another method, a cloth is stretched over the mouth of an earthen or brass tekeli, and rice flour is placed on it and steamed. In examples that add fragrant joha rice or cardamom, the aromas of the rice and spices rise with the steam.

Breakfast plates and Bihu

Some makers share memories of eating it as a winter sweet with breakfast or evening tea. Food writer Moumita Paul writes of making this sweet with her older sister for Sankranti when she was about 11. Another maker introduces a method that uses roasted black sesame seeds and jaggery as the filling. The same steamed rice-flour casing is complemented by the sweet aroma of coconut or the toasty fragrance of sesame.

At one breakfast shop, Anima Das was layering moistened flour, coconut and jaggery on a kettle lid, covering it with a cloth, and turning it over onto the mouth of the kettle of hot water to steam. The freshly steamed pitha is served with black tea, arranged on a plate alongside other rice and sesame snacks. Around Bihu, homes also make many kinds of pitha, including ones cooked on a griddle and ones cooked in bamboo tubes.

Packing flour into a vessel and making tekeli pitha beside a pot over a fire at a market. Ramhari Market, Darrang, Assam, 2023. Gitartha.bordoloi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized version supplied by the source; content not changed after retrieval.

Tekeli pitha arranged on a plate. 2021, অজয় দাস / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized version supplied by the source; content not changed after retrieval.

Glossary