Panampazham rice cakes

How do you like stories to be told? In a straight line from start to finish? Zig-zag back-forth, dipping and darting through sequence and time? My academic training tells me that arguments must be built like musical scores; there must be anticipation, there must be foreshadowing, a crescendo, a denouement. My literary sides care less for sequence, though they still follow the same rules. The end can happen first, and then the beginning. Besides, here I am in December, posting a story that really unfolded this past summer when the ripe panampazhams were falling like hail from the toddy palms surrounding us. Life isn’t a straight line, after all; hopes and remembrances make time-travelers of us all.

So with my panampazham adventure, I started at the beginning, I imagined an end, saved the in-between parts for later. You know the star ingredient from my prior post, so here’s what became of her before the details of how:

Panampazham pulp gets used in all sorts of ways: from Bangla-regions spilling into Odisha, there is taal kheer, taler bora (fritters), pithas, luchis and all variants thereof. Further South, Sri Lankans dry the pulp into pinattu though for Jaffna Tamilians, the panangai paniyaram rules. Further East, the Thai (and I think the Cambodians in their own tongue) answer with steamed Khanom tan. Sometimes it’s the palmyra leaves used to wrap, sometimes it’s banana; sometimes it’s just pieces of the fruit’s persistent calyx that’s acts as an oyster shell container (as in the last image in the set above). I’m sure there’re more variants, yet to be learned.

I read of all these recipes and journeyed through all these lands having silent conversations with all of these unknown village cooks, never once leaving home, my hands deep in pulp, in awe of the ingenuities of the humblest kitchens. What you see in these images was the outcome in mine.

And now at last for the process and recipe.

STEP 1: THE BATTER

• A nice rice, preferably aromatic, soaked for a few hours–until the grains lose hardness but still have a bite to them. Grind this into a thick paste with very little water, leaving it a little gritty.
• Rices which work well: Gobindobhog, Mulliphulo, Jeeraga samba, Illuppaipoo samba, Gandakasala, Mulan Kayama. Better if they’re raw and semi-polished.
• Add fresh grated coconut–“thengai poo”. You can grind this or mix it in, if it’s reasonably fine. Grinding gets you a smoother final cake. Mixing keeps a bit of that coconut juiciness intact. Your call.
• Add sweetener. I was torn on this. I’d have loved to add pana-vellam or palm jaggery. But the stuff is dark, and the color of the resulting cakes would have gone from the classic orange to duller browns. I didn’t want white sugar: we don’t use and the flavors aren’t as rich. Opted for in-between jaggery–a light kind, if you can get it. Otherwise, white sugar is a fall-back.
• Add flavoring: a little cardamom, powdered.
• Then the pulp gets added in a 1.5 or 2 pulp: 1 cup rice sort of ratio. It’s flexible. Go with what produces a thick batter. This needs to be wrapped in banana leaves, so it cannot have a “flow” to it, except like in slo-mo.

STEP 2: FERMENTATION

You can leave this mixture to ferment for a few hours, or you can move to leaf-wrapping almost immediately. Fermentation improves nutritional quality, but it also sours the rice cakes, so you might want to use more sweetener than less if you plan to ferment. My younger one loves these fermented though as the process mutes the slight bitterness of the fruit pulp.

On the other hand, panampazham pulp comes bubbling with wild microbial activity, so it’s like a very active starter. See the image below, taken just after pulp extraction. Combined with coconut and sugars, it won’t take long for this to lighten your batter without souring it too much.

Take a call: leave your batter to rest a bit, or for a few hours. Then move ahead to the next step.

STEP 3: THE WRAPPING

Easiest to let you see how this is done rather than talk-talk-talk, so here are the images.

One tip: wrap the filling loosely and make sure to leave an opening for the rice to expand as it cooks.

STEP 3: THE STEAMING

This is the easy part. Assemble all the wrapped rice batter packets in a bamboo or other steamer, and let them steam for about 15-20 minutes. The rice will cook and puff out of the gaps you’ve left, the leaves will go from bright green to dull and you’ll know it’s done.

Let this sit and cool for a few minutes before unwrapping, or else it will stick to the leaf and not unwrap neatly.

Et voila, you’re done. These are best served fresh and warm, but will keep well (refrigerated) for a few days, if they last that long. But you’ll want to re-warm them somehow before peeling off the banana casing and eating.

The End!