PUTTU (Rice Powder steamed with layers of grated coconut in cylindrical shape)

Continuing our dishes made of rice, the next dish is one of the best, traditional and one and only  PUTTU!

Puttu is a very common dish in Kerala as well as Tamilnadu and Srilanka... Its a breakfast dish is usually eaten with Kadala (Bengal Gram) Curry or cow peas curry, green gram, banana, pappadam etc.

In Kerala, Puttu is make mainly in cylindrical shape in the vessel specifically made for this called Puttu Kudam with Puttu Kutti. 



Ingrediants:

Raw Rice - 250 gms, coarsely ground (must NOT be ground into fine powder)
Coconut - 1, Grated
Salt to taste

Process:

Pour around a litre of water into the puttu kudam (the pot - the bottom portion of the vessel) and keep it in low flame for it to heat up and boil.

Meanwhile, take the coarsely ground rice in a wide mouthed pan; wide mouthed pan is for your hands to be able to freely move around inside the vessel when you mix water with the ground rice. 

Take around 200 ml of water and sprinkle around 1/4 of that into the ground rice in the vessel. Make sure water is sprinkled consistently and slowly. Mix thoroughly.

Repeat this step  2-3 times. Mix it without any lumps. 

After 3 times - which mean you would have added around 150 ml into the rice powder - the complete rice powder would have become wet. Its very important to ensure that the rice powder does not become like a dough/batter/paste/sticky etc.  It should hold its shape when pressed between your fist and crumble easily when pressed harder/poked. 

Now, take the puttu kutti (the cylindrical upper portion of the puttu maker) and put some grated coconut into it. Make sure you put the mesh that comes alongwith the vessel into the cylinder. Then add the wet rice flour for till it reaches around half of the kutti. Now add some more grated coconut, and add the wet rice flour for till it reaches  almost the top of the kutti. Add grated coconut again and close the kutti with its lid.

Place it into the puttu kudam (bottom portion, in which water would have started boiling by now). Keep in medium flame. After sometime steam would start coming out oif the pores in the lid. Once the steam start coming out, keep in low flame for about 5 more min.

Now remove/detach the upper cylindrical part from the bottom part and remove the lid from the cylinder. 

Push out the cooked puttu from inside the cylinder into a plate.

Follow these steps for the remaining wet rice powder.

Puttu is ready. Serve hot. Serves 5-6 people.

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