Vella(Jaggery) Kozhakattai

Ingredients:

For the Cover;

1 cup rice flour

1-1/4 cups water

Pinch of salt

1-2 tsp vegetable oil or Ghee

For the Jaggery Coconut filling (Vella poornam)

1 cup fresh coconut, grated (fresh is recommended, though you can use frozen too)

3/4 cup Jaggery, powdered

Pinch of cardamom powder (or as per taste)

Method:

For the filling;

Add jaggery and coconut together in a skillet.

In low heat, saute until the jaggery melts and the mixture thickens. Add the cardamom to the mix and toss well.

Tip: If it does not thicken well, add a little rice flour along with little drops of ghee and cook further for few seconds until it thickens.

While still warm, take a small piece of this filling (it will be sticky, you can grease your palms with ghee or oil) and make a small ball. Repeat for all the filling.

For the cover;

Soak raw rice in water for 1 hour. Drain the water well with a cloth and tie the ends of the cloth so that the rice is not exposed to the air. Let it dry for 1 hour. Now grind them in the mixie to a fine powder and sieve it. 
Bring 1 1/4 cups of water to a boil. Add salt and oil to the boiling water.

When its boiled, remove 1/4 cup of water and set aside. You can otherwise heat only 1 cup of water to boil in one skillet and another 1/4 cup of water in another skillet.

Take this skillet off heat and set it in a counter.

Add the rice flour to the 1 cup of boiled water.

Using a wooden spoon give it a stir. It will be hot. It should come together into a mass all clumped together. 

Tip 1: If you find that this is too dry and not sticky, then add the additional boiled water you set aside, drop by drop, until it comes together.

Tip 2: If you find this too sticky and not pliable, you can use additional few sprinkling of rice flour/maida (all purpose flour) until it does. Make sure too much flour is NOT added. The taste might get affected. That's why its preferable to go with less water and then added if needed than vice versa.

Let it sit for few minutes until its cool enough to handle. It should still be hot - only just enough to enable you to handle the dough. Dont let it get cold.  Set aside two small bowls - one with oil/ghee, another with warm water. Grease your hands with oil and start kneading the dough.

The idea is to make it pliable - into a smooth consistency like that of chapathi dough. The difference is that while chapathi dough has gluten and will stretch, rice flour lacks the gluten and will not be stretchy.

The dough will be smooth but yet slightly sticky.

Grease your palms well and break off a small piece from the dough. You should be able to rotate the dough into an extremely smooth ball - as seen in the picture.


Alternate now between dipping your fingers and greasing it with oil and warm water for preparing the rest of the steps. Using your thumb and other fingers , make a small crater in the ball you made, like an inverted cone. 

Slowly rotate and go around making this crater until it looks little bigger. Make the crater sufficiently big enough to drop in the rounds of filling you made earlier.
Drop the sweet filling you made into the depression.

Very slowly brings the ends together over the top of the filling. Be gentle.

Bring it together so that you can pinch the top, sealing the filling.  Pinch to make a small horn.

You can always pinch off excess dough and shape the remaining to look like a beak. 

Repeat with rest of the dough. Now steam them for about 7 minutes. To know its done the color slightly changes and the cover becomes little translucent.

Once done, remove and drizzle some ghee on top of it (optional) and enjoy it warm/hot.

Courtesy: http://chefinyou.com/2010/09/vella-kozhukattai/