Good Food Today: Sweet and Spicy Wheat Kozhukattai

Kozhukattai is a popular south Indian snack which are usually prepared using rice flour. The best part is that they are steamed and hence a healthy snack not just for kids, but for everyone. Yesterday I tried them with wheat flour.I made both the sweet and spicy ones. There are many versions of kozhukattai. I used some poha as well for the filling which is completely optional.So here goes my recipe...

Sweet and Spicy Wheat Kozhukattai

Ingredients:

1 cup Wheat flour

1/2 cup Poha ( optional)

1/2 cup grated Coconut

Ghee/Oil

For Sweet Kozhukattai:

1/4 tsp Cardamom powder

1 tbsp Cashews and Raisins

Sugar to taste

For Spicy Kozhukattai:

1/2 tsp Mustard seeds

1/2 tsp Cumin seeds

1/2" pc Ginger, finely chopped

3-4 Curry leaves, chopped

2 small Green chillies, chopped

1 tbsp Cashews

1 tsp Oil

Salt

Dry roast the wheat flour for few minutes, maybe about 3-4 minutes. When its cooled, sprinkle some ghee/oil and add salt.Now make a dough using this like how you make for chapathi by adding water.Keep it aside.

Wash the poha, drain and squeeze out the water. Keep the poha aside.

For sweet filling : Mix half the coconut, half the poha, cardamom powder, sugar, cashews and raisins. Mix well and the sweet filling is ready. If you want, you can sprinkle some ghee too.(I omitted that.)

For spicy filling: Heat oil in a pan. Splutter mustard and cumin seeds. Add ginger, green chillies, curry leaves and cashews. Saute for a minute. Now add the rest of the poha and coconut. Add salt and mix thoroughly. Remove from heat and keep it to cool.

Make small balls out of the dough. You can roll them out into small flat discs using rolling pin or using hand. I did this with hand and it will be easy if you apply some oil on both the hands when you do this. Keep the filling inside, fold them and make into any shapes as you like. I made 2 different shapes to distinguish sweet and spicy ones. (The shapes didnt come very good though.. ;-) )