Puttu with Kadala Curry - my strong favorite

Recipe for Puttu and Kadala Curry
Preface 

During each summer vacation, when I would return home from college, even before I unpacked my stuff, my mother would ask me what I would like her to prepare. With twinkling eyes and an effervescent smile, I would immediately utter - Puttu and Kadala curry. 

Puttu is a dish from Kerala made of rice flour. Traditionally, it is made by steaming rice flour on a rocket-like apparatus - a pot containing water with a long cylindrical tube attached to its mouth. The cylindrical structure contains the moist rice flour mixture and  is covered with a lid with holes to let steam escape. 

Kadala curry is the side dish for Puttu, a gravy of black channa. Typically, people have this dish for breakfast and pair up puttu with ripe bananas going the simplest way. 

On Onam day - Sep 9, 2011, I made Puttu and Kadala Curry along with Palada Pradhaman payasam. The festival did not fetch a holiday from work and I had no time to prepare the complete Sadhya/feast. 

My mother got me a cute looking apparatus much like the Aladdin's magic lamp to prepare Puttu. This small cup shaped apparatus takes the rice flour (puttu mixture to be steamed). It can be placed on top of a pressure cooker or any steam vent/source. The steam from the pressure cooker cooks Puttu in about five minutes. 

Below is a picture that shows the apparatus at work in my kitchen -

Puttu preparation

All we need - Puttu podi, grated coconut, warm water with little salt added to it.

Puttu podi or rice flour used to make Puttu is available in most stores in major South Indian cities. In Bangalore, brands like - Double Horse, Nirapara and Manna are available. I prefer Nirapara puttu podi, and there are two versions I buy - white rice flour and red rice flour. I prefer mixing them and so my puttu comes out a little reddish in color and not snow white. 

I usually mix equal quantities of white and red rice flour in a flat, big plate. Mean time, a glass of water with 2 tsp of salt is heated on stove till little hot. This water is sprinkled over the rice flour to make it moist, ensure that you don't over wet or create lumps. This moist puttu podi is left aside for 10-15 minutes.

Place the mini plate with holes inside the cup apparatus at its bottom. Add a layer of grated coconut on this plate. Fill the inside of cup with moist puttu podi. Add another layer of grated coconut on top of the rice flour. Close the cup with the lid. Add few glasses of water to an empty pressure cooker and heat it till a prominent plume of steam comes out. The set up is ready, place the lamp on the pressure cooker, right where you would mormally place the whistle.

Leave the set up for 5-7 minutes. Remove the cup from pressure cooker and invert its contents onto a plate.
The puttu, if cooked well, will fall as a single entity without breaking up. 

Repeat this process to make as many pieces of Puttu as required. 

The volume of Puttu this puttu maker makes in a single attempt is less, therefore this works well for a small family.The conventional rocket apparatus would save lots of time if you were making for many people.

Kadala Curry

To soak overnight (preferably 8 hrs atleast)

1 cup black channa (black chickpeas)

1/4 cup green gram whole (this helps in adding volume to the gravy - optional)

To begin with, cook soaked black channa under pressure (5-6 whistles).

A pinch of turmeric, salt and little (1/4 tsp) ghee is added to channa cooking it in pressure cooker. Ghee ensures that channa is soft and well-cooked and leaves a nice aroma as well.

For Gravy

1. 5-6 red chillies (for medium spicy)

2. 3 tbsps full coriander seeds (dhaniya seeds)

3. 2 tsp fenugreek seeds (methi seeds)

4. 4-5 garlic pods  (add more if you like garlic)

5. 2 thin slices of ginger 

6. 1 medium sized onion (cut into big chunks)

7. 1 medium sized tomato (chopped into big chunks)

8. few sprigs of coriander

9. 3-4 full tbsps of grated coconut

Dry roast gravy ingredients 1-3 in a pan. Once the chillies change color and leave an aroma, transfer the contents of pan to mixer. Now in little oil, fry onion chunks with cut garlic and ginger until the raw smell goes. Add a pinch of turmeric and little salt. Once onion chunks are fried, add tomato pieces and saute well till the raw smell goes. Add coriander leaves. Transfer this to the mixer, allow to cool. Add grated coconut without frying. Add little water and grind well in mixer to get a smooth paste.

In the kadai

All we need- 1 small sized onion finely chopped, tamarind water, cumin seeds (jeera), oil, salt, chilli powder (if required), garam masala powder, finely chopped coriander for garnish, pressure cooked black channa, prepared gravy in mixer.

Process 

Add 3-4 tsp of oil, add little jeera/cumin seeds when the oil is hot. Add finely chopped onion into the wok and fry till golden brown. Add salt to taste.

Transfer the cooked black channa to the wok. Give it a good boil.

Transfer the gravy in mixer to the wok. Stir well and check for any adjustments in salt and spice.

Take a gooseberry sized ball of tamarind and makes its extract in luke warm water. Add this tamarind extract to the boiling mixture in the wok. Give the contents of the wok another boil.

Add just one pinch of garam masala powder. Garnish with finely chopped coriander and turn off the stove. Do not boil for a prolonged interval after adding tamarind extract, this increases sourness of gravy. Likewise, do not heat excessively after adding garam masala powder, it leads to loss of aroma.

Kadala curry is ready to be served with puttu. This gravy can also be served along side Idiyappam and Appam.

Footnote

My friends' mother has shared the recipe for kadala curry sans coconut in her blog with pictures, am sure i that will help too, please refer-
http://lakshmisindiancurry.blogspot.com/2010/08/kadalai-curry-black-chickpeas-curry.html

This is my first attempt in writing down a breakfast/main dish recipe. I work with hand approximations and barely use the spoon. So it was quite an ordeal to trace back/recollect how much tsp/tbsp of the ingredient I actually added. And for illustrations, I do not stop to click pictures while cooking. And even if I do, they are on my unimpressive Nokia 3110C mobile camera. 

I really appreciate the patience and efforts with which my friends' mother and owners of many food blogs I follow post their recipes with clearer details of ingredients and better illustrations I hope to churn out more recipes with more precise details and lively illustrations in future.