Poornam Kozhakattai

I thought I’d try and be an ideal Iyer-maami for once and start with a dish that is offered to Lord Ganesha. In the Hindu (Iyer) tradition, Ganesha is regarded as the remover of all obstacles, so it’s customary for us to start anything by worshiping Him and invoking His blessings. So here are my symbolic offerings through my experience of making Kozhakattai! I know my mom will be proud of at least this act of mine. 

Every year, on Ganesh Chathurthi (Lord Ganesha’s birthday), the primary celebratory item on the menu is Kozhakattai (Modhakam). It is rumored that this is Ganesha’s favorite dish. Broadly, there are two varieties of this rice dumpling - sweet and savory. In almost every festival, we try to have a combination of both sweet and savory dishes to balance out the palate, and to symbolically portray the balance and contrast our Life offers. The sweet version (the most common version) has a scrumptious filling of coconut and melted jaggery (known as poornam). This filling is stuffed into cute pockets of rice-flour balls, and then steamed to perfection. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? :). Yeah, so I thought too.

As an adolescent and teenager, my designated “job” during Chathurthis was to pinch out the rice balls, make nimble pockets with my fingers, stuff the filling and neatly fold the corners to make a purse. If I may say so, I was quite good at making the “purses”. My mom and great aunt were much pleased that I could put this skill down on my matrimonial-resume ;). So again, I thought - how hard can this be? Until the day I made my own, I didn’t realize the precision and skill required to make the perfect consistency of rice-flour dough and the jaggery-coconut filling. Therein, is the real skill.

Preparing the rice-flour dough (You need: 1 cup of water, 1 cup of rice flour,  a teaspoon of salt and sesame oil)

Armed with Meenakshi ammal’s book and measurements, I set out to make the rice-flour dough. I have to say that this step is easy-peasy.

1. Boil 1 cup of water with a teaspoon of gingely (sesame) oil and a teaspoon of salt.

2. When the water comes to a boil, add 1 cup of finely ground rice flour (note the easy 1:1 proportion)

3. As you add the rice-flour, start stirring the mixture continuously to avoid forming lumps.

4. Keep stirring (for about 4-5 minutes) till the mixture comes together as a nice lump of dough. (Note: I switched off the heat within 2 minutes or so and continued stirring in the remaining heat. If you find the dough to be sticking to the bottom of the vessel, remove the pan from heat). This step requires a strong arm, so employ a male member of the household if your arms tire.

5. Once the dough comes together looking “glossy” (meaning the flour is reasonably cooked), transfer it onto a wet piece of cloth (any thin cotton cloth works fine.. just ensure the dye on the cloth does not run and stick to the dough. It’s safest to go with a white cloth). Wrap the dough into a tight ball in the cloth, so it continues to remain moist. The dough cracks if it becomes dry.

6. Let it cool a bit. Gently knead the dough when it is slightly cool and ready to be made into balls. But keep it covered in the moist cloth.

Preparing the coconut-jaggery filling (poornam) (You need: ¾ cup of powdered jaggery, 1 cup of coconut gratings, and 1 teaspoon of powdered cardamom). My re-attempt of poornam making is here.

1. Add a teaspoon of water to a heavy bottom pan (or a not so heavy-bottomed pan - doesn’t matter much).

2. Powder Jaggery into little bits. In the US, it’s a lot of work to powder the balls of hard, stone-like  jaggery. A trick I use is - stick the jaggery into the microwave for about 30 secs (or more depending on the amount of jaggery), and crumble the heated, loosened jaggery with your fingers. Caution: Do not over heat, or you will end up with a melted puddle of jaggery.

3. Add ¾ cup of powdered jaggery into the pan, and stir till it melts and begins to froth up in little bubbles (Note: Stir the jaggery on sim, or medium heat)

4. At this point, add 1 cup worth of grated coconut (I approximated here, for the cookbook says the gratings of 1 big coconut - I had no inclination for hunting a big coconut, cracking it open, and grating it).

5. Continue stirring the mixture on sim/low heat, till the mixture becomes “sticky” and devoid of liquid (for 6-7 minutes)

6. Remove from heat, and add one teaspoon (or more) of powdered cardamom.  Allow it to cool. The cooled filling should be a sticky, gooey mixture of jaggery and coconut. It shouldn’t be runny or hard -must be just right.

Putting the two together

1. Once the rice-flour dough is cooled, take a little ball and pinch and flatten the ball between your fingers, as if you were making a bowl (recall your days of playing with clay and play doh). Keep a cup of sesame oil nearby, and dip your fingers in the oil to avoid them from sticking to the dough and tearing the bowl/pocket you are creating.

2. Place a teaspoon (more or less) of the cooled poornam filling into the pocket, and seal the edges by bringing them up into a knot, and press them. The end result should like a draw-string purse.

3. Grease idli plates with some sesame oil, and place the stuffed kozhakattais on them. Two per plate if they are small-medium sized. If you don’t have idli plates, you can devise your own steamer. You can use a vegetable steamer etc.

4. Bring some water to a boil in a tall, deep vessel (the ones used to cook pasta). Place the idli plates inside it, and make sure the water doesn’t touch or come above the bottom-most idli plate... if that’s case, your bottom kozhakattais will turn out soupy.

5. Close the pan (with a lid that has a vent for allowing the steam to escape) and cook on high heat for 10-11 minutes.

6. If the kozhakattai’s color is changed from pale white to a creamy beige and it looks soft, and the filling oozes through here and there, then you know it is cooked! Transfer onto a plate and eat away.

Lessons learned from past mistakes:

I realize I need more “visuals” to demonstrate the making, filling and sealing of the kozhakattai. Will take more helpful pictures the next time around!

Let me bring your attention to point number 5 of the filling preparation stage (the step highlighted in red). This is a tricky step, the most crucial step that decides whether your filling will be runny and spoil the kozhakattai by making it sloppy and goopy, or if your filling will turn into a hard candy, making the kozhakattais inedible.The proof is in the stuffing, indeed. Unfortunately, Meenakshi ammal doesn’t provide a concrete clue for us novices to know when to remove the filling from the heat. In my case, I kept stirring the mixture because I wanted a liquid-less state (as the book suggests), but somewhere I went too far (despite not reaching the liquid-less state). I realized that I shouldn’t be heating the jaggery for too long as it would turn into candy, so I removed it when this fear crept in. However, it was a bit too late. The jaggery was just past the right consistency. My poornam filling was chewy - it was thankfully not hard, but regretfully not soft and gooey either. When I asked my mom and mom-in-law to solve this for me, both couldn’t verbalize the exact clues to look for, to check if the filling was ready. It is an intuitive feeling, they say. But I haven’t reached that stage of intuitive cooking yet. So I will continue to explore, and hopefully offer some tips on the exact time to stir, the heat at which to stir, and the consistency to look for to get that perfect yummy texture. If you have words of wisdom to offer, please do!

(Update: the poornam turned out right in my second attempt. All it takes is to stir the jaggery+ coconut mixture for exactly 6-7 minutes on low heat.).

And here was the output :)