Traditional Indian Pataleo

This is a traditional Indian Mangalorean sweet dish eaten as a desert or a te time snack."Pataleo" means flattened rice cake.

I remember, growing up my mum used to make this on special occasions,festives or over the weekends.
My mom was brought up in traditional mangalorean(Karnataka- indian state)family. Well I was born and brought up in Mumbai(Maharashtra-Indian state). Both are different and uniques cities. In Both the cities people speak different dialect, different culture and have its own traditional cuisine.

This recipe is a hand down recipe from my mom who resides in Mumbai orginally known as "Bombay".
The staple diet of karnataka is rice. So rice is grown in abundant. Mostly the dishes are made up of
rice.

Pataleo is made of par-bolied or red rice finely grounded in a stone mortar to thick paste by adding water to form aa dough. Then 1 inch piece of rice dough is cut off to roll it into a ball. Then that ball is flattened
on a haldi(turmeric) leaf(traditonally)and filled with fresh and finely grated coconut and jaggery(palm sugar) mixed together and then one side of the flattened rice dough is folded into half , then steamed in a  pressure cooker or a steamer. Can be served warm or cold.

If served cold then add a scoop of vanilla ice cream along with the serving. It is a crowd pleaser dish!

It is a long and time consuming process, but it is worth time. Instead of grinding the rice.I have
used rice flour and kneaded by hand into a dough by adding little water.Instead of using haldi leaves, I have used banana leaves,as they were readilly available in any Asian market. It gives nice aromatic flavor and taste to the dish. I have replaced turmeric leaves with banana leaves.

Recipe
2 cups par-boiled rice flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup water to knead the dough
1 cup freshly grated coconut or sweetened coconut flakes
1/2 cup jaggery(palm sugar) broken into pieces
3-4 pods of cardamom(discard cover and crush seeds)
salt ot taste

Preparation:Method to knead the Dough:

Place rice flour in a deep dish bowl. Add salt. Add water as required to form a dough. Don't add too much water or else the dough would be watery.

filling mixture:In a bowl, mix coconut, cardamom and jaggery and smother together by hands till they marry each other.Cut the banana leaves in squares the size little bigger then the size of the flattened rice dough.

Preparing Patleo:Roll 1 inch rice ball and flatten it, with the palm of your hands on the cutting board or plain surface. Fill the dough with 1 tblsp mix on a banana leaf and fold over.

Form an assembly line for the rice balls and the coconut/jaggery mixture to make it quicker and faster. It will make 10 to 12 pataleos. When you have all of them ready, place it in a steamer and steam for 25 minutes
or untill well done. I have used red rice flour, so the rice cover is cracked after steaming. It is normal.