Puttu

Steamed food is very healthy. In Kerala we have a lot of steamed dishes, so today I am going to talk about making one of the most famous breakfast items in Kerala, ‘Puttu’, which are cakes of steamed rice flour and coconut with chickpea/channa curry, stew or banana as the side.

Puttu can be made with either rice or wheat or ragi flour. It is one of on the easiest dishes that can be made, just that you need the right vessel. It is steamed in a tube shaped vessel specifically used for making puttu. This vessel will be placed over a water pot that provides the steam. I really wanted to pick up on of these vessels when I was down there, but sadly I couldn’t.

So basically you take rice flour and knead it with warm water and a little salt. But you shouldn’t knead it into dough like we do for bread. It should still be coarse shavings of rice flour. You need to then layer this mixture along with grated coconut into the tall tube like vessel and place it over the pot of boiling water.

Let this cake steam cook for a few minutes and then you can serve the steaming hot puttu with some lovely chickpea curry or “kadala” curry as they say in Kerala. In the olden days puttu used to be made in coconut shells and the taste that the coconut shell lends to the puttu is something totally unique.

Some people have puttu with banana, this is very typical in Kerala and it will take time to get used to the combination of tastes. During the mango season people also have ripe mango with puttu. Sometimes they layer ripe jackfruit along with grated coconut it lends an all together different flavor. It is indeed amazing how many variations you can have to the ordinary dish.