Steam rice cakes - Puttu with home made flour

I haven't blogged in a long time i don't remember how long too.But one thing is that i miss blogging so much for not only the recipes but the whole process cooking, editing pictures and posts, and lastly i miss the links the blog world gave me.I have made some really good friends through blogging and i would want to continue to do so.

Today's post is a simple staple breakfast item that is often made down south in our places and especially in Kerala.Our malayalee friends can tell us that they give numerous make overs to this humble simple dish.

Today I'm using flour that i made myself because its better than the store ones.You get store packed puttu flour its a little coarse rice flour.You can make large quantities of this flour and store it for a longer time because we roast the flour.

 I served it with chickpea/channa curry but you can have it with sugar and bananas too.

Preparation time : roughly 30 minutes cook time plus flour making time around 1 hour

To prepare the flour you need overnight time

To make the puttu flour

Raw rice 1 cup

Colander
drier jar of your Mixer

• Wash and soak the raw rice for about 1 hour. 
• Drain this rice over a colander and allow it to drain completely it has to be damp not wet nor dry.
• Take this damp rice and pulse it in your drier jar of the mixie into an almost fine powder.You shouldn't see any pieces of large grains.
• Once you have ground all the rice, take a large wide mouth pan, vessel.Heat it and add all of this ground flour and start roasting it on a low heat or else it may burn.
• As you roast it you will see lumps forming but thats ok.Keep roasting until its all nice and warm and dry.If this step is well done the flour will stay good when stored for a long time.

To make puttu 

Rice flour (from above) 

Water about half a cup

Salt to taste

Coconut 4-5 tablespoons grated

• Take the roasted puttu flour add salt and mix into the flour well with hands.
• Sprinkle water slowly and mix the flour so as to dampen the flour we don;t want a very wet mix so be cautious about adding the water.
• Enough water needs to be added and very carefully.To find out if the mixture is wet enough make a small ball out of the mixture don't apply much pressure just give it a slight shape it must hold shape and when you break it, that should be done easily too.Just make a small ball and break it if its not too tough to make the ball nor break it then the mixture is in the right consistency.
• You get puttu steamers with the pot or ones you can attach to your cooker whistle.Detach the whistle and slowly place puttu steamer on to it.Or else you can use a idli steamer too but you won't get this tubular shape.
• Take about 2 cups of water in your pressure cooker, detach the whistle, and wait for the steam to come.
• In your puttu steamer, theres a small perforated plate to cover the bottom, add grated coconut followed by the prepared rice mixture, repeat with coconut after a small portion of rice flour.Finish off with coconut.Cover the steamer.
• Place this filled steamer on the whistle once the steam starts coming, and allow to steam for 10 minutes on medium high flame and another 3-5 minutes on low flame.By this time you can see steam coming out from the top of the steamer this is a sign that the puttu has steamed.
• Take the steamer carefully with a cloth, push the puttu out through the bottom with a long metal skewer which comes along with the puttu steamer set.

Serve hot with channa curry or mash bananas and add sugar and enjoy sweet soft fluffy puttu.

Tips:

• Don't add lots of water at a time, if the mix gets too wet the puttu will not be soft and if its not sufficiently wet the puttu will be dry and hard.
• You can serve it with boiled green moong and coconut.