Puttu - Steamed Rice Cakes with Coconut

Go to any place in Kerala and invariably you will stumble across the puttu.  It was even featured in one of The Ellen Shows by a 6 year old chef!  In other words, there is no escaping the puttu if you are in Kerala!

It is a dish made with just 3 ingredients - rice flour,  freshly scraped coconut and half a teaspoon of salt.

The dish is made in a vertical steamer that is traditionally made out of hollowed out bamboo. My steamer is a gift from my mother and is made of brass.  You can get stainless steel ones in the Indian or Sri Lankan grocery stores in Melbourne.  

Puttu can be eaten with a fruits like bananas, jack fruit or mangoes and it can be eaten with savory meat curries like chicken, pork or beef curry.  The most commonly served combination in Kerala is puttu with chick pea curry the recipe for which you can find here: 

https://kitchenanugraha.blogspot.com/2020/07/chickpeas-curry-south-indian.html

My family loves puttu with juicy mangoes and in Summer we make a lot of it when we get the Kensington mangoes.

Ingredients:

1 cup - Puttu Flour (dry roasted rice flour - available from your local Indian/Sri Lankan Grocer)

1/2 cup shredded coconut (If you want to use fresh scraped coconut, that is the best choice)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 to 1 1/2 cups warm water.

Method:

In a large flat plate, place 1 cup of the roasted rice flour. Mix the salt in 1 cup warm water.  Add water a bit at a time and keep mixing it into the dry rice flour.  Keep mixing it a little at a time until all the rice flour is moist, there may be some little rice balls that have formed, but no thing big, and all the flour is wet.

       

In the puttu steamer, fill the pot with water till it is 3/4 full.  Put it on the stove.  while the water is heating up, layer the puttu flour in the cylinder portion alternating 1 tablespoon of shredded coconut for every 4 tablespoons of puttu flour.

Start with the shredded coconut and finish off at the top with the shredded coconut.

Place the cylinder on top of the pot of water.

Wait till the steam comes out of the top of the cylinder. Using a wooden spatula, push out the puttu on to a plate.

Serve hot with savory curry of your choice - or fruit.