All big and small eateries of Balangir wore a crowded look on Sunday. Come rath yatra and you see long lines in front of the hotels of Balangir town. The reason is that people are there to buy just one dish — sitabhog, a popular sweet dish which is available only on the rath yatra day.
Every family in Balangir buys the auspicious sweet on this day at any cost. The dish goes off the menu of the hotels for the rest of the year.
Restaurants eagerly wait for the rath yatra day every year because they make a fast buck by selling the dish which has grown in great demand over the years. The hotel owners engage special cooks to prepare the dish as it requires special skills.
Sanatan Sahu, who runs a small restaurant in the town, said he had been engaging a certain confectioner for past several years to prepare the auspicious sweet during rath yatra. “I book him well in advance because he is in great demand during rath yatra. I also pay him handsomely, much more than my regular cooks,” he said.
Sources said eateries in Balangir make a business of around Rs 5 lakh on sitabhog on this single day. Basu Sahu, owner of a shop that sells this sweet, said there was a riot-like situation at his small eatery on Sunday. “It was very difficult to manage the customers who thronged my hotel in large numbers to buy sitabhog. I did my best to satisfy each of them,” he said.
Discussing how this dish is made, Susant Sahu, a young cook specially hired to prepare it, said it needed special skills. “It is a very delicate job. A small mistake can spoil everything,” he said. Susant said that four parts of khua (solidified milk) is mixed with one part maida (fine flour).
“The ratio of the two components should be perfect, otherwise the whole thing is spoilt. The two are mixed properly and small balls are made out of it. It is then fried in boiling ghee and fried till it becomes red which is then treated with a warm solution of sugar. After some time, the red balls are transferred from the sugar solution to hot milk. Sitabhog is ready,” Susant told The Telegraph.
