Navarathri Neyvedyam / Recipe:- Puttu

Puttu is the favoured neyvedyam on a Navarathri friday. I had been making "Aval Puttu" for Navarathri all these past years. Sometime back, one of the readers had asked me the recipe for Therandukuli  puttu. Thats when I decided to prepare rice puttu. On an experimental basis I prepared this puttu earlier with fantastic results.

This puttu prepared using roasted rice flour, jaggery, cardomom and coconut was traditionally made when girls attained puberty. There used to be celebrations on a grand scale and puttu  was prepared using large quantities of rice. Rice flour was roasted in big urulis. During the days when girls were married before attaining puberty, tradition demanded that huge quantities of puttu be sent to the in-laws house.

Since I have very little time , I shall stop my story telling and proceed with the recipe.


Ingredients:

Raw Rice: 1 cup
Jaggery: 3/4 cup
Grated Coconut: 2 tbsps.
Cardomom powder: 1tsp.
Ghee: 1 tbsp.
Cashew nuts: 1 tbsp.
raisins: 1 tbsp.
Salt a pinch
Turmeric powder: 1/2 tsp.
Warm water : 1/2 cup

Method:
Wash and soak the rice for 2 hours. Drain and grind to make a fine powder. Roast the rice flour to a light pink color. Allow to cool a little. Add a pinch of salt and turmeric powder to the rice flour. Mix well. Sprinkle warm water little by little to the rice flour mixture and mix gently, until it attains a bread crumbs consistency. Try to make a ball using the rice flour, with the fist. It should form a ball in the fist and crumble when the fist is open. That is the right consistency. Do not add more water. Transfer the rice flour to a clean, cloth and make a bundle.

Keep the cloth bundle on a steamer and steam for 20 minutes. Remove and spread on a clean plate. There should not be any lumps after steaming. If there are any lumps, run the rice flour in the mixer for a few seconds.

Meanwhile, prepare a hard syrup with jaggery(kallu pakam). Add the grated coconut and cardomom powder . Remove from heat and add the steamed rice flour little by little,stirring constantly. Add 1/2 tbsp. ghee and stir again. Stir until all the rice flour gets coated with jaggery and the puttu turns out like sand grains. It should not turn to a sticky mass(this means the syrup is not the right consistency).

Heat the remaining ghee and fry the raisins and cashew nuts to a golden brown color and pour over the puttu.

Offer to Devi and distribute to all guests. You will win accolades.

Happy Navarathri!

Navarathri at Jalandhar

Hope everyone had a nice Navarathri. We had a nice Navarathri, this time at Jalandhar. While leaving for Jalandhar last month, my sis-in-law asked me,”What would you do for Navarathri in Jalandhar, you won’t be able to have your kolu and inviting people for thamboolam”. I said, “I will peacefully do all my puja and recitation of Lalitha Sahasranamam and Soudrya Lahiri and other stotras”. I did exactly that and I also made different neivedyams every day. On Vijayadasami day, we had Neyyappam, Vada, Dhokla, Semiya Payasam, tomato bhath, lemon rice and curds rice. We also invited two couples for lunch. I had the satisfaction of celebrating Navarathri at a faraway place.


The attraction in North India is of course, the Ramlila when, on Vijayadashami day, the effigies of Raavan, Kumbhkaran and Meghdhoot are burnt with bursting of a lot of crackers and merriment. My maid was asking me, if we had similar burning of effigies in our place, to which I said, no. She asked me,”Aap to Raavan ka pooja karte honge, na”( perhaps,you would be doing puja to Ravana), “I have heard there are people down south who worship Ravana”. I said, though we do not worship Ravana, we dont burn any effigies either. However, we decided to go and watch the fun in the evening. We barely managed to see the last effigy, of Ravana, being burnt. We did wander through the very crowded mela though. Maybe the next year we will be able to see the whole event.

Recipe: Vazhathandu Karuvadam

Vazhathandu or banana stem is extensively used in cooking in Kerala and Tamil nadu. It has many medicinal properties. It contains potassium, minerals and other vitamins. It is a good diuretic and a good antihypertensive. Since it contains a lot of fibre it also constitutes a bulk food with low calorie content. Consuming banana stem atleast once a week will ensure a clean stomach. We prepare Molagoottal, pachadi, poduthuval and thoran with the stem. However, be warned preparing the stem for cooking is time consuming and hard.

We have never prepared vazhathandu karuvadam at home. The only times I have seen this being made is when Kanakam mami made them at my friend's house. It is called killu karuvadam, as the dough has to be pinched into small bits and dried. My astute and blessed mother-in-law used to say, "It is a time consuming process ... only Parukutty manni has the patience to do that," referring to her neighbour. I had also never thought of making vazhathandu karuvadam all these days because we had to buy vazhathandu from the market. This year though, I have a good garden with plenty of banana trees which have started giving fruit. Banana plants only last until they fruit once, so after it has given of its fruit, the plant has to be cut and the stem may now be used for cooking. Since I had so much vazhathandu (our neighbours do not know how to prepare vazhathandu), I decided to prepare vazhathandu karuvadam this year. And it was a good decision. The karuvadams are so cruncy and yummy that I ended up making quite a few lots.

Since I did not know the process, I called my athanga (cousin) and asked her how to prepare Vazhathandu karuvadam and followed her recipe. Here we go.

Ingredients:

Vazhathandu(banana stem): 1' long
Raw rice: 2 cups
hing: pea size
green chillies : 4
salt to taste.

Method:

Wash and soak the rice with hing for 3 hours. Grind with salt and green chillies to a smooth paste. Let the batter sit overnight.

The next day:
Cut the vazhathandu into thin discs. As you cut it you will get fibres which need to be wound around the fingers and then removed. The small discs then have to be cut lenghtwise and across to make them into tiny pieces. This is the method to cut vazhathandu for any preparation. This process will blacken the fingers and hence it is advised to smear the hands with a little cooking oil or butter milk or salt.

Boil 10 cups of water in a wide mouthed pan and add the cut vazhathandu pieces and salt. Allow to boil for 10 minutes. Add the ground batter and keep stirring until the batter is cooked well and it forms a nice soft dough. Allow to cool. When cool, pinch small pieces of dough and drop in a sheet and allow to dry in the sun for 2 days. Your vazhathandu karuvadam is ready to fry. njoy!

Tip: instead of pinching the dough, I dropped spoonfuls of dough in the sheet and then pinched off bits from these drop. I thought it was much easier. Follow whichever you find easier.

Recipe: Cucumber Dosa

Dosa is dosai to the Tambrams. Sweet Dosai was an integral part of our Sivarathri festival. As the full fast on Sivarathri day meant abstinence from salt, people ate vella dosai (sweet dosa) and paruppu kanji after offering pooja in the evening to break the fast. The conventional Vella dosas are prepared from wheat flour and jaggery, the recipe for which I shall post later. As my (handsome and charming) son has developed gluten allergy, this Sivarathri I made a gluten free vella dosa.

To all of us who thought cucumbers are only for salads, it would come as a surprise that you can make yummy breakfast spreads also with cucumber. I know many people who cook cucumber into Majjige huli (morekozhambu) and Kootu. It also makes an excellent cooling drink for the summer months.

This vella dosa is made from cool cucumber, rice, coconut and jaggery and is a Mangalorean dish.Most of us have had cucumber only in salads and hence this sure is a different way of having that cool vegetable. I had only heard about them from some of my Mangalore acquaintances and hence the recipe is my own. This recipe will give a nice, soft and yummy vella dosa, though I cannot vouch for the originality of the recipe. Perhaps the original version is different.

Ingredients
Cucumber 1 (medium size) about 250gms.
Rice: 1 cup
Jaggery: 2 tbsp.
Grated coconut: 2 tbsp.
Salt a pinch
Oil to fry the dosa

Method

Wash and soak the rice in just enough water to wet the rice. Wash and grate the cucumber. Mix the grated cucumber with the soaked rice (cucumber juice will ooze out of grated cucumber and soak the rice well) and allow to soak for 3 hours. Grind the soaked rice, grated cucumber and all the other ingredients, except the oil, to a smooth batter.

Make dosas immediately. You need to use very little oil if using a non-stick tava. The vella dosa tastes yummy with a dollop of butter on top.

Njoy!