Ukadiche Modak | A sweet dumpling

If you asked me 5 years before, if I will ever try to prepare Ukadiche Modak, my answer would have been – Oh God Never ! Reason – too complicated – too time consuming – not worth! But today, I feel, after couple failures plus trails, the modak will come out fine, trust me.

This Ganpati, I prepared 11 Ukadiche modak as prasad for the first day. If a five month old mother can prepare it, anyone can give it a try . The recipe was based on the Ruchira-  a Marathi cookbook.

For freshers, Modak is a sweet dumplings with stuffing of jaggery and coconut, while the shell is made of rice flour (if its steamed ones) or flour (if its fried ones). In Marathi, steamed means ukad so this post relates to Steamed sweet dumpling.

You Need:

• Rice flour: 2C (here in Pune we get specific rice flour for modak, but it is the same)
• Sugar or Jaggery: 2C (I used Jaggery)
• Poppy seeds: 1/4C – roast it
• Grated coconut: 1 full medium size
• Ghee-Tup: 2 tbsp.
• Cardamom: 3-4 powdered form
• Oil: 1/2 tbsp.
• Salt to taste

You Do:

1. Mix Jaggery and grated coconut and cook on a medium-low flame. When more than half done, add roasted poppy seeds and cardamom powder. Cook till soft.
2. In a big bowl boil 2C of water, to this add ghee, oil and salt. Mix rice flour to the boiling water, beat thoroughly, switch off the flame, cover and let it stand for some time.
3. Now, you are supposed to knead the dough when the above mentioned mix is hot-warm else it does not come out good. It is not possible for me to do it by hands, it really burns, that’s why the kitchen gadgets are made. I used the food processor to knead this and it comes out just fine.
4. Now prepare the Modak:
   • Take a lemon size ball of the dough, flatten it with hands to a size of puri
   • Stuff the coconut-jaggery mix
   • Close the stuffing by gathering the dough together in tiny pleats and making a peak.
   • Steam the formed modaks by keeping it on perforated plate, into a steamer or pressure cooker without the weight instead a glass, bowl – for about 10-15 mins.
   • When you remove, the colour of the shell will change.

Forming the shape of the modak is quite an art, you can use modak shaped moulds for it. I tried my hands for some creativity.

Instead of perforated plate we get modak patra- an exclusive perforated plate made for steaming modak, I used that.

Yes, its not an easy recipe, but for all of its taste and satisfaction, once year you can always give it a try.

Sending this to “Let’s cook with coconut” event.

 

Happy Cooking and posting!

Lil’ Foodies’ update
Today at the stroke of 09:09 pm my Lil’ Foodie will complete 6 months. So we complete our roller coaster ride of 6 months and looking forward for many more fun filled rides to come.His glimpse where he is slithering fast towards the Ganpati idol but the click feels he giving sashtang namaskar to the God.