Gothambu Puttu/Rice puttu

I love my mother's cooking like most everyone does. The sad part is that I started appreciating her cooking quite late. This I'd say was mostly because, when I was young, food, especially the regular home-cooked meal was only my second or sometimes even my third choice as I was then so much in favor of snacks and hotel food. Being in the boarding and hostel later helped me come to value how precious my mom's cooking was. I never got any of her talents but in my small way, I do what I can and want to share what I make in my kitchen on a daily basis.

This recipe is one of my favorites. I like any kind of Puttu. The various ones I have had a chance to savor in my mom's kitchen are the rice flour puttu, (Ari Puttu), wheat flour puttu (Gothambu puttu) and the tapioca flour puttu. The last being quite rare nowadays I suppose.

Gothambu Puttu/Wheat Puttu

Ingredients:

 Whole Wheat flour
or Rice flour                                         - 1-2 cups

 Fresh, ( or frozen, which is thawed),
Grated Coconut                                    -1 cup

 Salt                                                     - To taste

Warm Water                                        - As needed to mix the flour( mostly just to sprinkle on)

Preparation:

1. Put the wheat flour in a bowl and add the required amount of salt to it and mix well.

2.  Sprinkle the water a little at a time and try mixing the flour and getting it all moist. Take care not to add                          

     too much water at a time as the flour can easily lump up.  As its wheat, it has a tendency to

     lump up even with only the required amount of water.

3.  Break down the flour to a Uppuma consistency.

4. You use a Puttukutti or a cheratta cooker( two special contraptions for making Puttu, which has a hole to let the steam pass through for cooking), but if you do not have it handy, you can always use the top half of a coconut shell, which is like a cup with three eyes in them. Now, you need to know that Puttu is also known steamed rice cake /wheat cake, so the holes in the top part of the coconut shell are quite significant in letting the steam in, to cook the flour.

                                                    Cheratta Puttukumaker( coconut shell shaped puttu maker)

5. Into the Puttukutti or the coconut shell, you put a spoon-full of grated coconut first and stack some flour on top and then again add a little coconut over it and then flour on top of that. Continue this process of stacking one over the other until the cup/ puttukutti is full.

                                                 The puttumaker over the pressure cooker

6. Have a quarter of a pressure cooker filled with water steaming on the stove. As steam starts escaping from the spout, put your cup/puttukutti full of the raw flour on top of the opening and close it with a lid for the coconut shell and its own lid for the Puttukutti.

7. You will know the puttu is ready to be taken away and a  fresh one to be re-loaded, when steam
    vigorously escapes from the top of the lid. Remove the cooked puttu onto a plate and fill the puttukutti/coconut shell and repeat the process of cooking again.

The best combinations for the Puttu are:
1-Banana & Sugar
2-Kadala curry( black/white channa)
3- Pappad & Payar ( cooked green gram )
4-Any Fish/ Meat/Chicken curry

Puttu is a daily, traditional breakfast of the state of Kerala in India. It always has the ability to pull you back to the thoughts of home, with a feeling of nostalgia for what once it all was back home. Now-a-days, we use the refined flour we get from grocery stores, but its even more tastier if we can soak the rice for a few hours, grind it, sieve it and then lightly fry it and let it cool down, before making puttu. For wheat,  if you are back home, you wash the fresh whole wheat and dry it in the sun and then grind it to a flour and use it for making puttu. The degree of taste is many times higher for the extra effort, I got to say.