Pumpkin Kadamb

Happy Halloween and early Diwali to everyone!

Fig. 1. Pumpkin Kadamb

Pumpkin season and Halloween = Pumpkin recipes! We often get good pumpkins at the market in this period. And usually pumpkin pie is the thing to make. But recently my Mom sent me some "Haldi Paan" (turmeric leaves)!!!! :)

She had got them fresh during Ganesh Chaturthi and it appears to still be available some places. She knew there was no way I could get my hands on the fresh haldi leaves. So she dried them and saved a bunch for me!! And as soon as some of my family came around to visit they brought along this amazing gift of leaves!! Ya-ya-yippee-yippee-ya-ya-yeah!!

Haldi-paan are used to flavour/impart-fragrance to several somewhat super-traditional dishes. So the fragrance of haldi leaves reminds me of Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali, Satyanarayan poojas and other such religious festivities! Ooh.. I couldn't wait to use them!

I got pumpkin, thinking I would make pie with it. Then I spoke with Mom and she mentioned she adds pumpkin to Kadamb (KuhDumb). And Kadamb also uses haldi paan! I jumped at that! :) Pie will happen next time. Now we make Kadamb!

Ingredients:
Rice - 1/2 cup, wash and soak for 5-10 minutes
Pumpkin - 1 small, sugar pumpkin (meant for pies)
Coconut - 1/4 or 1/3 cup, frozen/fresh, grated, thawed
Jaggery - 1/2 cup (I used dark brown sugar, 5 tablespoons)
Salt - to taste
Haldi (turmeric) leaves - 2 dried long ones

Procedure:
1) Cut sugar pumpkin into half. Microwave both halves till the pulp is tender.. maybe 3-6 minutes. Let it cool a bit. Scoop out the pulp.
2) In the mixer, grind the grated coconut to make it smooth and the above cooled pumpkin pulp. Add minimum water (as needed to grind.)
3) Separately grind the washed rice to coarse consistency. Again, add as little water as possible.
4) Combine ground rice and the mixture of ground pumpkin + coconut. Add sugar or jaggery and salt (just a pinch maybe). Mix well. Consistency should be like cake batter, not very thin at all.
5) Pour into a greased vessel. Cut each haldi leaf into two. Add half in the water in the cooker. Moisten the other half haldi leaf and place it on top of your mixture (like in above picture). Steam the vessel for 15-20 minutes till the mixture becomes somewhat harder.. like idli.
6) The final result should have idli-like consistency, but not spongy. I had used good old cereal bowls to get these. And I inverted the bowl over a small plate and cut the kadamb it into sectors like a pie.
7) Ideally, if I had fresh haldi leaves, I would have put the batter on the haldi leaf and folded it so that the leaf completely contains the batter. This would have been steamed. But this is not possible with dry leaves. One could do the same with banana leaves and add haldi leaves to the side like I just did.

Variations: One could add grated cucumber or grated doodhi (lauki/bottle gourd) instead of pumpkin.

Substitutions:
1) Idli rava can be used instead of ground rice. Maybe sooji too?
2) The fragrance of the haldi leaves is important. But if I did not have them, I would have just added some powdered cardamom to my batter and continued the same way. Reliable fellow that Cardamom.

Kadamb is meant to be served as breakfast or a snack. I would also think of it as a light and mild dessert.

Acha.. Happy Halloween to you all and an early Happy Diwali (.. the house smells like it is already Diwali today!)

Cheerio and thanks for reading!