‘KaDamb’ is one of the most popular Konkani breakfasts. It is usually prepared using pumpkin or a special kind of cooking cucumber called as ‘Magge’ or ‘Mangalore southekayi’ (See this for more details of this cucumber). The cucumber version is more popular than the pumpkin version. Pumpkin(dudde) Kadamb is usually made sweet.
When I heard about Meeta’s FMR event , I did not know what would be my entry. Then I remembered, Aayi had mentioned about this dish a few days back. Since we usually preferred the not-so-sweet cucumber version, pumpkin version was prepared very rarely at home.
The authentic version of this dish is prepared on turmeric leaves. Since I could not get hold of these leaves, I used Banana leaves. I got these banana leaves in the frozen section of Chinese store here. Usually the rice rava is prepared fresh by soaking rice for around 1 hr, then dry it for sometime and make rava, but I used the ready made idli rava. I used ‘ Butternut squash ‘ for this.
The other simpler version of this dish is Tausalli .
Ingredients: Grated pumpkin 1 cup Coconut (fresh or frozen) 1/2 cup Rice rava/sooji (idli rava) 1/2 cup Jaggery 1 tbl spn Cardamom powder 1/4 tea spn Salt Banana/ turmeric leaves
Use banana leaves only if the turmeric leaves cannot be found. Turmeric leaves give a great aroma to this dish.
Method: Mix all the ingredients and leave it for around 30min. The mixture leaves some water. This makes the dish more tasty.
Keep two leaves on a flat board in following manner.
Keep a handful of mixture on the leaves.
Fold tightly the bottom leaves followed by top leaves as shown.
Keep these bundles in a vessel.
Steam in cooker/steamer(without putting whistle) for around 10mins.
Discard the leaves. Serve with ghee or chutney powder or asafoetida chutney .
Makes 3-4 Kadambs Preparation time : 30mins Note: I will write the cucumber version separately as I don’t want to confuse between the two.
Lunch for today is fruits(grapes, apple, strawberry,banana) and biryani with egg, potato, soya chunks.
Lesson learnt : biryani is not something that should be cooked in hurry. I had already started cooking it and then hubby told me he wants to go early. It needs a lot of time to cook. To make it cook soon, I added more water and cooked on ‘high’. The rice grains got sticked to each other by doing this. But still the biryani tasted great, ‘not-so-good looking tasty biryani’ :D.
