Steamed Rice Cake With Brown Chickpea Curry (Puttu-Kadala)

Soak channa / kadala / chickpea overnight.

Cook the chickpea in a pressure cooker and keep aside.

The rice flour used for the 'puttu' must be a bit coarsely ground. This is also available in stores as 'Puttu Podi'.

Take the rice flour in a bowl and add salt. Add water little by little.

The flour must be rubbed together after each addition of water to form a crumb like texture.

Do not add water at one go. The flour should resemble bread crumbs at the end but not lumpy.

Take a cylindrical or round-shaped puttu container and put a little bit of grated coconut at the bottom, fill this up with the prepared puttu flour.

Then again top it with some grated coconut. Steam this until done.

Remove the rice cake into a plate. Prepare the rest of the flour in the same way.

While the rice cake or puttu is getting cooked, roast half of the grated coconut, coriander seeds, red chilli, pepper, shallots. Grind this into a paste.

Heat oil in a kadai, add mustard seeds and once it splutters add the curry leaves.

Take a handful of chickpea and slightly crush them. Add the cooked chickpea along with the crushed ones to the kadai.

Add turmeric powder, ground paste, salt, and garam masala and water.

Allow this to boil and then cook on low heat for another 5 minutes.

Serve the rice cakes (puttu) with the chickpea curry and fried papadams.