A Childhood Memory of Kolukattai
Preeta Samarasan's Madame S. Vallipuram has a recipe for us
The fourth installment of Preeta’s Object Permanence series bridges two seasons—winter and spring. It took a little coaxing, as you’ll soon see, to procure the recipe.
For more insight into this delicate negotiation, be sure to check out the first half of Object Permanence 4, Nothing Left to Escape From, which we published earlier this month before the equinox. Then roll up your sleeves and cook up a tasty treat, worth the wait.
Big love, Ashley
Madame S. Vallipuram’s Childhood Memory of Kolukattai
When they told me I have to contribute a recipe also, I said finish. Am I supposed to pretend as though I did the cooking and nicely send in one mutton curry recipe? From the slaughter to the serving, there were always other people around to do it, and now I can’t even remember their names although I can still see some of their faces if I close my eyes.
After my husband was forced to take “early retirement” and we left the bungalow, I told him, you want to eat mutton curry, koddal curry, nandu curry, this that and the other, you go and find one nice clever woman to work in the house. So that’s what he did, and that nice clever woman served up square meals and snacks five times a day or sometimes more for donkey’s years and now her daughter does the same, and I eat almost none of it. A hot black Nescafe and two cream crackers on a saucer in front of the TV, that is my style. For variety I occasionally replace the cream crackers with rusks or roti kapai, or on special days perhaps a bun from the Chinese bakery.
So. A recipe. I was cracking my head thinking, what can I send them that won’t leave me feeling like a liar? Then one day on my phone I saw a video of one Malay lady selling what my own dear mother used to make and handfeed me. And would you believe it, the whole video was in Malay and they had even given it a nonsense Malay name – karipap kukus it seems! And I thought to myself, this also is your nationalism now? First you took our way of life and now you pretend you invented kolukattai. Very nice, very nice. Well it’s not karipap kukus, it is:
KOLUKATTAI, or if you are one of those high-class Proper Tamil-speaking types, KOZHUKATTAI.
I must warn you that this recipe is coming from the most remote regions of my memory, but that said, in those days I was helping my mother in the kitchen by age ten because one never knew what type of family a girl was going to be married into. I had to be prepared for real wifehood, you see. No one could have predicted that I would never need to use any of my wifely skills. When you do something that many times as a child, your brain and your hands cannot forget it.
Ingredients
about 3 cups clean rice flour
½ cup of pacha payaru (green moong dhal, broken ones are best)
fresh grated coconut from half a coconut
1 cup brown sugar or jaggery
pinch of salt
Method
First, pick all stones out of the pacha payiru and then cook them just until they are not hard to the teeth. They should still have their shape, so don’t boil them to a mush. Keep them aside to cool.
Sprinkle just a few drops of cold water over the rice flour and rub it a little with your fingers. Don’t put too much water or you will get a dough!
Now roast the flour in a large, flat dry pan for four or five minutes while stirring. After roasting, sieve the flour.
Now add a little hot (not boiling) water and a pinch of salt and knead the flour into a dry dough. You don’t want it to be too soft and smooth at this stage or it will become more moist when you add the sugar. Better to add too little water at this stage as you can adjust later. (Any doubts please go and watch one of the dozens of YouTube videos to get an idea of the correct texture, don’t try to be a hero and rely on a recipe with no photos in this day and age if it is your first time making kolukattai.)
Now knead the grated coconut, the brown sugar, and the cooled pacha payiru into the dough. You should end up with a smooth and soft dough. If it is too firm and dry, add a little more hot water a few drops at a time.
Now comes the fun part, or at least the part that was fun for me as a child. First, line a steamer with a thin wet cloth. Next, instead of shaping the dough into some ridiculous “karipap” shape, simply take a handful of the dough and press it inside your fist. You should end up with a sort of crescent that bears the impression of your five fingers. This is the traditional kolukattai shape. Place the shaped kolukattai on the cloth in the steamer. Repeat with the remaining dough.
When all the dough has been shaped, steam your kolukattai for about 15-20 minutes.
Eat hot-hot, when they have cooled just enough for your mouth to bear the heat. If you have no one to handfeed you, you will have to handfeed yourself. This is true not just of the eating of kolukattai but in life in general.
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