Kozhakattai

Come Vinayaka Chaturthi, we all look forward to eat this delicious dish.

Ingredients:
Raw rice 400 grams
For Filling:
Sesame seeds and Jaggery
or Coconut scrap and jaggery
or Channa Dal(Kadala Parupu) and jaggery

Procedure:
Soak the raw rice in water for 2.5 hours. Grind it with one cup of water.
Then take a kadai and add 2 cups of water, add required salt and a tablepoon of sesame oil. When water boils, add the ground mixture and keep stirring. This is the hard part, you have to keep the heat in medium low and keep stirring till proper consistency is achieved. This may take half an hour and your arms have to be strong. Make ure you keep stirring or else the batter may get cooked. We dont want to cook it now, we are just making a dough to make the kozhkattais.
Now we have to make the filling.

Sesame seeds filling:
Take 100 grams sesame seeds and fry it in a kadai in medium heat till the seeds pop and nice smell fills the place. Then grind jaggery into fine powder. The amount of jaggery depends on how sweet you would like the dish to be. Now grind the sesame seeds for few seconds. It shouldn't turn into fine powder; just broken into smaller bits. Mix jaggery and ground sesame seeds. Add 1 Elachi/Elakai/Cardamom crushed or powder.

Coconut scrap filling:
Scrap half a coconut into fine shreds. Add required amount of jaggery powder. Add 1 Elachi/Elakai/Cardamom crushed or powder.


Channa Dal/ Kadala Parupu filling:
Boil 200 grams Kadala parupu or keep in pressure cooker for 2 whistles.
Mixie the boiled kadala parupu and fried coconut(1/4 coconut). Dont make it too powdery. Take 200 grams of jaggery and add it to boiling water. To this "Vella paagu" ; jaggery boiled in water, add the mixture of coconut and parupu. Add 1 Elachi/Elakai/Cardamom crushed or powder. Keep stirring till it becomes solid. This will used as filllng.

How to make:
With the raw rice mixture make balls. With the help of little oil, make it into "kinnams" small bowls and add a spoon or 2 of filling. Seal the edges. Different shapes can be made "Modagams", "Kozhakattais" "moonr elai".

In Idly cooker, let water boil. Fill in the idly plates with kozhkattais and close the cooker for 15 to 20 minutes.



Kozhkattais are ready.



This is my mom's recipe and I made these for the first time. It did come out delicious. Though Pillayar Chathurthi is over, you can make these and enjoy!