Labels

Food (53) Fitness (10) Nature (7)

Saturday, October 30, 2010

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!

26 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi,

That looks beautifully yum..Happy diwali to you too!!:)

Dr.Sameena@

www.myeasytocookrecipes.blogspot.com

SS blogs here said...

Thanks, Sameena!

Priya Suresh said...

Pumpkin kadamb looks absolutely wonderful..

Sushma Mallya said...

looks beautiful...hearing abt this dish for the first time,love to try this...

indosungod said...

Happy Deepavali to you too SS.

This pumpkin Kadamb looks delicious and most of all I love the fact that you steamed it in the pressure cooker.

SS blogs here said...

Thanks, Priya, Sushma and Indo!

aipi said...

Hmm..sounds wonderful..very new..both the ingredients and the procedure are very interesting!

US Masala

SS blogs here said...

Thanks, Aipi!

M D said...

Perfect for Halloween! Pumpkin kadamb looks absolutely delicious!

SS blogs here said...

Thanks, Mallika!

Cham said...

We never cooked with haldi leaves! Very different and tasty dish!

SS blogs here said...

Thanks, Cham! Yes.. haldi leaves are somewhat rarely used in cooking. No strong flavour as such. But very distinct fragrance.

Aparna S Mallya said...

'Haldi Paan' reminded me of 'Kheeri' a konkani delicacy made with coocnut milk.

Kadamb looks beautiful and delicious.

(btw, in reply to yr comment, I actually forgot to mention ghee in the ingredient list earlier!! I corrected it probably 20 mts after I published the post, and within 2 mts i got yr comment. Whew! :))

SS blogs here said...

Thanks Aparna.. I should try making the kheeri. That is so funny about your ingredient-list fix.. haha.. :D

Panchpakwan said...

Looks yummy and cute presntation.

SS blogs here said...

Thanks, Jyothi!

Soma said...

Happy Diwali to you and all your dear ones.

I have never made anything sweet with pumpkin (except murabba and pumpkin pie) and I hate pumpkin pie. This is a nice way to use pumpkins and make it into a delicious something. I read about the haldi leaves at redchilies.

Soma (www.ecurry.com)

SS blogs here said...

Thanks, Soma!

Pavithra Srihari said...

looks like i have missed out lots of posts here .. catch up with all those goodies in a day .. but this one looks sooooo inviting ... love the texture

SS blogs here said...

Hey Pavithra.. good to see you! Thanks for stopping by!

suvi said...

Kadamb....gosh it's been a lifetime since I've had that, though when I did have it, I didn't care at all for it!

When my mom was here, she steamed some fish for me wrapped in haldi leaves...oh the flavour!

SS blogs here said...

Hey Aqua.. my tastebuds seem to have changed over time. :) And now your comment reminds me I should make fish too!

Deepti said...

First time here...U have a wonderful recipe collection....
Never tried this combination of pumpkin....Thanks for the recipe...
Following U ...
http://www.panchamrutham.blogspot.com/

SS blogs here said...

Thanks, Deepti. Nice to have you here.

M D said...

hey my mom used to make similar kadabu with jackfruit, pumpkins, cucumber, etc. makes me nostalgic.

SS blogs here said...

Hey Mallika.. these traditional dishes do elicit a lot of fond memories. :)

-