Ellu Poorana Kozhukatttai / Sesame Seeds Stuffed Dumplings

I decided to update my blog only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I came to this decision to reduce hours spent before my PC. It is difficult to stick with the decision but atleast I try to follow it to balance my both personal and professional life.

Monday has passed and its Wednesday today and something struck my mind and alerted me that I have to post a recipe today. After a long search in my PC, I decided to post Sesame seeds stuffed dumplings (Ellu Poorana
Kozhukattai or Ellu Kozhukattai) which I had prepared few months back.
This post was supposed to come before Ganesh Chathurthi but since I was
not satisfied with the pictures I haven’t published it for quite
sometime. But today I decided to go ahead and publish the recipe thinking that I can change the pictures at later point of time. Till then, excuse me for the bad pictures.

In my hometown, we don’t have a custom of celebrating Ganesh Chathurthi using the idol of Lord Ganesh. However we prepare kozhukattais, offer it to Lord Ganesh and pray to him. We go to temple but in the temples of my district, we don’t have large festival Ganesh deities as we see here in Chennai.The very first year after I came to chennai, I was totally surprised to see every household buy idol of Lord Ganesh does a puja for it. It was facinating to see large Ganesh statues kept in every street corner(Almost I say!).

As I recollect the phrase, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” our family too followed the same way but after I got married, seeing my in-laws following the same procedure of celebrating festival in a very simple manner as we do at my native, I decided to stop the new ritual .Whatever different may be the ways of offering prayer, the festival dishes and their preparation methods remain the same everywhere.

Basic Information:

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Makes: 20-25 approximately

Ingredients:

For Stuffing:

Ellu / sesame seeds – 1 cup

Grated Fresh coconut – 3/4 cup

Jaggery – 1 cup

Green Cardamom – 4 nos

Water – as required

For Dumplings/ Kozhukattai:

Rice flour – 2 cups

Water – 2 – 3 cups

Gingelly Oil – 1 teaspoon + as required

Salt – a small pinch

Method:

For Stuffing:

1) Wash and sun dry the sesame seeds. Remove the impurities if any. Then, dry roast it till it splutters.

2) Make coarse powder of it using the mixie. Keep aside.

3) Grate the fresh coconut and keep aside.

4) Transfer the jaggery in a wide bowl or kadai. Add water just to immerse the jaggery. I have clicked this picture when half of the jaggery melted down and so the more water.

5) Wait till the jaggery dissolves well. Add crushed green cardamom.

6) Once the jaggery completely dissolves, filter to remove impurities.

7) Bring back the dissolved jaggery to the kadai. Heat well till it bubbles well.

8) Add grated coconut and powdered sesame seeds.

9) Mix well till the stuffing leaves out the pan. And now you get a slightly thick mixture. Do not cook it for long time, the mixture might get hard.

10) Let the mixture cool down. When it cools down, it becomes even more thick. At luke warm temperature, pinch approximately 1 tablespoon sized mixture and roll it as a ball. 

For the Dumpling:

1) Boil the water with 1 teaspoon of oil.

2) In a wide mixing bowl, take rice flour and salt. Mix well.

3) Add the boiling water slowly in batches to the rice flour and mix using a strong fork or wooden spatula.

4) When you get a very moist puttu flour or lumpy consistency, stop adding the water. Keep aside for few minutes by covering it.

5) Coat your hand with oil and then form a dough from the flour mixture. Knead the dough well till it is non-sticky and make equal sized balls out of it. You can use oil to make this job easier.

6) Take one ball at a time and with the help of oil, tap it to form a circular shape.

7) Keep the prepared stuffing to it and seal the edges. You can either make kozhukattai shape or modhagam shape.

8) Arrange them in a plate till you work on the rest of the dough/balls.

9) Steam them for 7-10 minutes or until they get shiny coating outside of the kozhukattai. Make sure to watch it after 5 minutes, because over cooking may lead to cracking of out dough.

10) Transfer to a plate and server warm.

Notes:

1) I used home made rice flour which we usually and specially prepare for making kozhukattai and idiyappam.

2) If you want to go for the flour marketed in shops, try Anil Kozhukattai flour, which mostly gives nice yield and soft kozhukattai’s.

3) If you are not able to make shape or pat the dough evenly, then knead it for sometime and make shape. If you still not getting and it is cracking while making the shape, then boil some(very little) water in a pan and add the dough and cook till it becomes thick by stirring well. Knead and then shape a kozhukattai.

4) When the kozhukattai’s are hot the filling inside tends to ooze outside when you break it. So, cool it for some time before serving.

5) Make sure to remove any impurity from sesame seeds or use good quality sesame seeds.