Puttu

Anyone who has visited Kerala would surely have tried this authentic Kerala breakfast item. It is my favourite 🙂 How can one not like it? It is steamed, so it is healthy, it has the flavour of freshly grated coconut and lovely accompaniments too. An ideal healthy breakfast candidate by all means.

Its is a simple, tummy friendly and easy to make dish with just 3 or 4 ingredients. One cannot go wrong with this dish. Just try it once and see it for yourself. Make sure your flour is properly moist, nor too dry nor very soggy which will result in lumps or a crumbly puttu. In my native place, puttu is made atleast two times in a week. They keep serving it with different accompaniments like kadala curry, green gram curry or simply with sugar and bananas.

Ingredients:

• Roasted rice flour 1 cup
• Salt as required
• Water as required
• Freshly grated coconut 1/2 cup

Method:

• Add salt to the rice flour and mix well.
• Sprinkle water little by little and rub with your hands so that the flour turns into bread crumb consistency. It should be lump free. It should hold together like a ball when we roll it like a laddoo.
• Keep the wet flour aside for 10-15 minutes for it to rest.

• Grate the coconut and keep it aside.
• Take a puttu maker and fill the pot with water and let it boil.
• Fill the puttu mould and rinse it with water. Put the mesh at the base and sprinkle coconut at the base. Then add a layer of the puttu flour very gently for 2-3 inches and then alternate it with again with coconut. Fill up the entire mould.

• Keep the mould over the puttu maker and steam it for 8-19 minutes.

• Gently push the puttu from the bottom into a plate.
• Serve with kadala (black chana) curry, banana and pappadams.
• Alternatively you can serve it with Cherupayar Curry. (As puttu is a regular at the breakfast table in Kerala certain homes prepare this as an accompaniment.)

Notes:

• If you do not have a puttu maker at home… fret not… take a pressure cooker or a big pot/kadhai and fill it with some water and allow it to boil. Tale a big sieve (chhalni) and rinse it with water. Sprinkle a layer of grated coconut on the bottom and then a layer of the puttu flour on top of it. Repeat it with coconut and flour. Place the sieve on the rim of the pressure cooker and close the lid without the whistle. Steam for 8-10 minutes.
• Alternatively, take an empty coconut shell and clean it well. Make a hole on one of the 3 eyes of the shell so that it can be placed on the pressure cooker’s lid at the whistle position. Take the shell and fill it first with grated coconut and then the flour. Repeat it. Place the shell on the pressure cooker’s lid and steam it. When it is cooked, invert it on a plate. It will look like sand cakes with which we used to play during childhood. Serve hot with curry of your choice.
• For a more healthier version, half of the rice can be replaced with slightly roasted whole wheat flour or corn rava or maize flour or ragi or any other millet flour.
• Puttu flour is very easily available in most of the super markets these days. But it is very easy to make these flour at home too. Wash and soak some raw rice or a combination of half raw and half boiled rice in water for 2 hours or more. Drain the water and spread it on a clean towel for 20-30 minutes. Take a dry mixer and powder it (while it is still moist) till it it a bit coarse (not very fine). Repeat with the entire rice. Roast the flour in a heavy kadhai till you can see steam coming out of it. Cool it and use it. You can store the remaining flour for few days in the refrigerator.
• If you feel your dough is too wet, you can add few spoon of the dry flour and rub it with your wet flour. If there are too many lumps, pulse it in a mixer for 10-20 seconds. It will be sand like again.
• Fill the puttu mould very gently with the flour. Sprinkle the flour little by little in to the mould. It should be very loose inside so that the steam will reach the top layer through the entire length of the flour.
• Enjoy puttu making and do not forget to share your feedback and experience. I would love to hear from you.