What next ? Puttu Kadala , of course !

Next cooking project just had to be an all time Mallu favorite dish . Puttu - Kadala. Puttu of course is a steamed rice cake and Kadala is the malayalam term for Black bengal gram. The final preparation is expected to look something like the photo shown. ( This is not a photo of my dish !! )

When the master chef is at work, nothing will look the way its supposed to look :)

Armed with a recipe ( I have learnt from my previous cake adventures that its always to swallow pride and ask someone knowledgeable for a recipe before you start) , I went about preparing this apparently simple dish.

First task is to take some rice powder mix it with water . You have to keep on adding water and mix it till the powder just begins to stick together while you press it in your palm. Well, that sounded easy enough. Obviously you have never heard of a positive feedback loop. It works this way :
Step-1 : Add water and mix,
Step-2 : You realize there is too much water
Step-3 : So add some more powder to compensate.
Step-4 : You realize there is too less water now
Step-5 : Go to step-1
Soon enough I am staring at pile of rice powder as high as everest.

Cooking of the puttu is not so tough, all you have to do is put this powder inside a steamer which looks somewhat like the picture shown and steam it for a couple of minutes.
For the first attempt, I did not steam it for enough time. I ended up getting powdered puttu instead of the ideal cylindrical shape. Second attempt was much better and I got closer to the desired shape. Remember that I had enough powder to keep on experimenting as long as I pleased !!

Undetterred, I moved on to the next item on the menu: Kadala curry. This did not pose me too many challenges. Kadala was cooked in pressure cooker for 25 minutes with Meat masala and little bit of haldi powder. After that I fried some chopped onions, added the cooked Kadala , added salt and chilli powder. Final step was to add coconut milk to it. I used an instant coconut milk powder mix from Maggi and it did produce a funny taste !! Maybe I should skip the coconut milk part from my next attemp.

Only one problem though. A slight overestimation of quantity of Kadala resulted in me ending up with enough curry to feed an army. Combined with the humongous quantities of rice powder , it has ensured that I need not cook anything else for a couple more days !! :-)

Taste wise it is not bad , defintely edible . Not bad for a first attempt , eh ?