Puttu – Arusi Vella Puttu

Traditional, tasty, long process all adds up to this delicacy vella puttu. This is made during Navarathri Friday or any day on Navarathri. It can also be served as light evening tiffin.This recipe will serve 2 to 3. It is a very long and tedious process and making it step by step will make it easier and more clear. Like many authentic and traditional recipes, small things are also important here and it is such an unforgiving recipe. So give yourself a lot of time and peace when doing this. At least for me, I will not multi task when I am working on this puttu. The taste is just out of the world and is delicious. Have used a lot of tamil words here, (so mentioning the english / hindi words –
Ravai – Sooji / Fine semolina
Veshti - Dhothi / cotton white cloth
Taambaalam - Big Plate
Paahu - Jaggery syrup consistency








Ingredients
Rice – 1 ½ cups
Jaggery – 1 cup (little less than the quantity of the rice puttu ravai)
Salt – A pinch
Turmeric Powder – ¼ tea spoon
Coconut (grated) – 1 cup (adjust according to preference)
Coconut (sliced to small pieces – ¼ cup (optional)
Water – 1 cup + ½ cup
Ghee – 2 table spoons
Cashew – 1 table spoon
Cardamom Powder – ¼ tea spoon
Nutmeg Powder – 1/8 tea spoon
Edible Camphor – A pinch

Method Wash rice well and dry them on a towel or veshti for 30 minutes. The rice should be dry to touch but have little moisture.
Grind them in a mixie to a ravai consistency. Sieve them through the ravai sieve (bigger hole than the flour sieve) and get the rice ravai. The consistency is similar to fine ravai. Set this aside. You can do until this process ahead of time and store them in an airtight container for later use.
Add turmeric powder and salt to a cup of water and heat it in the microwave for 1 minute until it is warm and not too hot.
Heat water in a cooker and keep a small vessel with water in the cooker. This is done to give it an elevation. I placed the small coffee davara for it. Now keep a vessel which has holes and also a white cloth or veshti ready.
Transfer the rice ravai on a big plate or a taambalam and sprinkle the turmeric water – a few sprinkles at a time and wet the entire ravai. DO NOT POUR WATER, JUST SPRINKLE. The consistency of the rice ravai should be “pidicha pidikkanam vitta uthuranum”. Meaning you should be able to make it a fist when tightened and it should crumble when left. So the rice ravai should hold when done in a fist and crumble to a powder when left. This is very important.
Transfer this rice ravai to the cloth or veshti kept ready and bundle it and keep in the hole vessel and steam cook it for 7 minutes. NO WHISTLE and THE WATER SHOULD NOT TOUCH THE RICE RAVAI.

Sieve the cooked rice ravai through a ravai sieve (bigger hole than the flour sieve) and you will get the beautiful flaky ravai. It will also looked like dried powdered coconut. Spread this on a big plate or a taambaalam. Grind the bigger ones that did not go through the sieve and sieve it again.
Heat a pan and add ½ cup water and add the jaggery. Filter the impurities once the jaggery dissolves. Reheat the jaggery water and bring it to a “muthina paahu” consistency. To check the consistency – there are 3 options. Option 1 is to check with a candy thermometer for around 116 degrees C. temperature. Option 2 is to look for the paahu to not stick to the side of the vessel and when scraped with a spatula it comes without sticking and is thickened. Option 3 is the traditional option which is drop a few drops in bowl with cold water. Now you can make a gel like with the paahu and when dropped on a stainless steel plate, it will make a “ding” sound.
Simmer the heat and transfer the jaggery syrup to the rice ravai and also mix it simultaneously with a spoon to ensure that it does not clump.
Add the coconut and cashew to the puttu and mix it well. Once better to touch, crumble the puttu with the hands and mix it also simultaneously to get an even coating and even mixture and well mixed puttu
The texture of the puttu should look like grated coconut. The Puttu is now ready!


You can use oil instead of ghee for a vegan version.
Sending this to my own event – Anniversary event, Healthy Foods for Kids - Combo Meals, Nithu's page, Spotlight - Festival food, Spotlight annoucement, Kids delight, Celebrate - Navrathri / Diwali, Jagruti's page, Let's Party - Prasadam, Surabhi's page, Navarathri 2012 event, Dish Name starts with P, WTML - Sweets and Savories, Celebrate - Indian Sweets