Puttu is Love

It's been some time since I have written a post. Now that I have lots of time, I thought about building up a note that I had written few years back. It is about Puttu.

What is Puttu ?

Puttu is a food dish usually made up of rice powder and grated cocunut. Rice powder (with required salt) is made wet by mixing with water using hands. It is not supposed to be too wet or too dry. Well, there are lots of links available online on how to make the perfect puttu. I'm not going into those details.
Next the wet rice powder mix is filled into a vessel (usually a cylindrical shaped one) together with grated cocunut. First put some grated cocunut and then the rice powder mix. Add cocunut to the layer wherever you want seperation or if you like cocunut a lot. Usually at the top of the cylindrical vessel also, we fill the grated cocunut.

Now that the filling is ready, we have to steam it. We take a pot, fill it with water and fix the cylindrical vessel on top of the pot. Heat the pot to generate steam, which will pass through the filling in the cylinder. After about few minutes, we could see steam coming out of the top of the cylindrical vessel. If you could, smell the steam at the top. The aroma is heavenly. We will get a feel of the taste of puttu. Fresh cocunut adds more to the aroma. Now that the puttu is ready, we take the cylindrical vessel from the pot. Push the puttu out from the cylindrical vessel using anything thin & long we can find. Puttu comes out of the vessel onto the plate and we can see steam all over the puttu. Again enjoy the aroma if you like it.

Self cooked Chemba Puttu with Kadala curry & Chicken Fry

Puttu is ready to be eaten. I have a long list of curry combinations for you. But before that, let me finish up on puttu.

Puttu varieties

Above I have mentioned cylindrical puttu. There are other shaped puttu as well:

1. Bamboo puttu - well this is again cylindrical, but more close to mother nature. Here we use bamboo sticks instead of cylindrical vessel
2. Uthiru - rice powder mix is spread over a large flat vessel and steamed. Puttu will be loose and texture will be kind of close to Upma
3. Chiratta puttu - puttu is made in cocunut shells. And hence the shape of cocunut shell.

There are different types of puttu based on the content of Puttu:

1. Rice puttu - made of white rice powder
2. Ragi puttu - made of ragi powder
3. Corn puttu - made of corn powder
4. Chemba puttu - made of red rice powder
5. Jackfruit puttu - made of ripe jackfruit. Trust me, this is super tasty.
6. Erachi puttu - made of beef and rice powder
7. Chicken puttu - made of chicken and rice powder
8. Motta puttu - made of egg and rice powder
9. Wheat puttu - made of wheat powder

The non-veg varities of puttu are more common in the northen parts of Kerala.

Puttu curries

Now that I have covered the puttu varities, let me move on to the curries that we commonly have with Puttu. People have different preferences, but the one combination that is evergreen is Kadala (black) curry. 

Let me compile a list of curries that goes with Puttu:

1. Black kadala (chickpea) curry
2. White kadala (chickpea) curry
3. Boiled egg curry
4. Chicken curry
5. Beef curry
6. Mutton curry
7. Fish curry
8. Cheru payaru (Green gram) curry and Papadum
9. Banana
10. Van payaru (Black gram) curry and Papadum
11. Parippu (dal) curry
12. Beef ularthiyathu/Chicken fry with milk
13. Sambar
14. Veg stew

Each of the above curries with Puttu is a treat to our taste buds. Do try it with all of them. My favourites would be Black kadala curry, Beef curry, Egg curry and Cheru payaru curry with Papadum. I really find it difficult to pick one among the above 4. 

How Puttu is Love ?

This is mostly the imagintion of the Poet. Feel free to ignore this paragraph. First the aroma of puttu. The flexibility with the multitude of curries. The taste. The ease of preparation. If we have grated cocunut and rice powder, preparing puttu is a piece of cake. It wouldn't take much time or effort. But yeah, preparing the curry definitely needs effort.  Even if the puttu is not white rice puttu, the white cocunut symbolizes love. 

Some Puttu memories

I used to be called "putturumees" in my school days. I used to have puttu almost every day for lunch. I didn't mind the name though. 

When I was young, there was no rice powder available in super markets as it is now. We had to prepare the rice powder. For that first we will buy the white rice. Amma would soak and clean the rice. Then dry it for some time. I may eat some rice out of it and Amma will warn about getting Pitham. And then ask me/my brother to take it to the mill to grind it. Usually 5-6 kg and at times 10kgs. We will take it to the mill (by walk or bicycle), and get it grinded.

The mill used to arouse curiosity in me. There was 3 phase connection at the mill. If any of the phases was not up, I had to go back to my home and come back later. Sometime, one of the phases will go down in the middle of grinding. Again I will have to go back. There was this really powerful motor which had a deafening sound. It was connected across the different grinders (for rice, coffee etc), using a combination of belts and couplings. If the rice was not wet enough (or if it is too wet), the blades will get stuck and it had to be cleaned in between. I used to be friends with that guy in the mill. Huh, I have all these memories crystal clear in my mind. Well I have drifted too much from Puttu here. :)

Amma used to make Jackfruit puttu in the season of Jackfruit. I could eat that puttu so effortlessly. And in case we had Beef ularthiyathu, she used milk to wet the Puttu so that Beef Ularthiyathu could be had easily with the puttu. These days both my wife and I cook Puttu at my apartment in Chennai. To this date, Puttu remains one of my favorite dishes. 

Closing Note

I didn't know I could write this much about our simple Puttu. Feels good now. In this time of lockdown, if we have stocks of Puttu powder and Cocunut, we can have it every other day. Also when the oppurtunity comes, try to travel to North Kerala to have more varities of Puttu and curries. Well, not just Puttu, but a lot of other food dishes.