R112Palada Payasam, Rebuilt
Rice ada in reduced milk, at a measured 100 millilitres
Recipes › Sweets and Payasam, Honestly
R115
Elayada
Rice parcels of coconut and jaggery, steamed in banana leaf
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringAlmost nothing, and that is the argument. The jaggery drops from about 150 g to 90 g across twelve parcels. What makes this the most useful sweet in the chapter is not its composition but its shape: one parcel is one portion, it arrives sealed, and you have to unwrap the second one in front of everybody.
Rice flour dough spread thin on a piece of banana leaf, a spoonful of coconut and jaggery in the middle, the leaf folded over and steamed until the parcel goes dark and translucent and smells of hot leaf. It is a monsoon teatime food, an offering at Karkidaka Vavu, a thing made in quantity when there are children in the house. It is also the only sweet in this book where portion control is a property of the object rather than a demand made of the eater, and that is worth more than most nutritional engineering.
Before you start: Soften the banana leaf before you touch the dough. A stiff leaf splits along its ribs the moment you fold it, and a split parcel leaks its filling into the steamer.
Elayada
Active 40 minutes Total 1 hour
Scale
12 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- For the parcels
- ✓12 pieces of banana leaf, each about 18 × 15 cm
- ✓200 g (1⅔ cups) fine rice flour, preferably roasted
- ✓250 ml water
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) salt
- ✓5 g (1 tsp) coconut oil or ghee, for your palms
- For the filling
- ✓150 g (about 1½ cups) fresh grated coconut
- ✓90 g jaggery, grated fine, or palm jaggery
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) cardamom, seeds only, crushed
- ✓a pinch of cumin, ground
- ✓a pinch of salt
Allergens: None of the major allergens as the recipe is written. Milk — only if you use ghee rather than coconut oil.
Equipment: Steamer with at least two tiers, or an idli pot; a heavy pan for the dough; scissors; a clean tea towel. Substitute: a large lidded pan with a trivet and 3 cm of water steams eight parcels at a time perfectly well. No steamer at all — bake the parcels at 180°C (350°F) for 18–22 minutes on a tray with a cup of water beside them; the leaf chars slightly at the edges, which some people prefer.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Soften the banana leaf pieces: pass each one over a low gas flame for 3–5 seconds a side, or dip in boiling water for 10 seconds, until the leaf turns a deeper glossy green and goes visibly limp. Wipe dry and trim out the hard central rib if it runs through the piece.
- Mix the filling — coconut, jaggery, cardamom, cumin, salt — with your fingers until the jaggery is evenly distributed and the mixture just holds together when squeezed. Do not heat it; the jaggery melts in the steamer.
- Boil the 250 ml water with the salt in the heavy pan.
- Tip in the rice flour all at once, off the heat, and stir hard with a wooden spoon until there is no dry flour left, 30–40 seconds. It will look like a rough shaggy mass.
- Cover and rest so the flour hydrates fully. This rest is why the dough will roll without cracking.
- Knead the warm dough with oiled palms — as hot as you can bear, because it comes together far better warm than cool — until it is completely smooth and takes a fingerprint without cracking at the edges, . If it cracks, wet your palm and knead again; if it sticks, oil your palm.
- Divide into 12 balls of about 30 g each.
- Flatten each ball directly onto a leaf with oiled fingers into an oval about 12 cm long and 3 mm thick, working from the centre out. Thin is the whole point: a thick elayada is stodgy.
- Spoon about 25 g of filling along one half of the oval, leaving a 1 cm border.
- Fold the leaf over so the dough meets dough, press the edges together through the leaf to seal, and fold the open leaf edges under. The dough must seal to itself, not just be wrapped.
- Steam in a single layer, in batches if necessary, until the leaf has darkened to olive-brown, the dough has gone from opaque white to slightly translucent, and a parcel feels firm rather than yielding when pressed, .
- Rest before serving. Straight from the steamer the dough is gummy; ten minutes sets it. Serve in the leaf, and let people unwrap their own.
Why this worksScalding the flour with boiling water gelatinises part of the starch before shaping, which is what makes a dough of pure rice flour — no gluten at all — pliable enough to fold. Inside the sealed leaf, the jaggery melts into the coconut and the whole parcel steams in its own moisture, so the filling never dries and never boils dry. And the leaf's own volatiles migrate into the dough, which is a flavour you cannot buy.
Sourcing note
Frozen banana leaf is sold in 400 g packets in every Asian and Latin American grocery and thaws in 20 minutes; it is what most diaspora readers should use and it works as well as fresh. If you genuinely cannot get banana leaf, baking parchment steams the parcels perfectly and gives you none of the aroma, which is a real loss rather than a cosmetic one — the vegetal smell of hot leaf is half of what elayada tastes like. Fine rice flour labelled "roasted rice flour", "puttu podi" or "ada flour" is the correct product; plain rice flour works but wants a minute of dry-roasting in the pan first. Frozen grated coconut is fine; desiccated coconut is not, because it has been dried and defatted and gives a filling that is dry and slightly chalky — if it is all you have, soak 100 g in 80 ml of warm water for 15 minutes first.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 21 g of net carbohydrate a parcel, and 8 g of that is sugars. One parcel with a black tea or a sulaimani is a defensible tea-time item; three parcels is a rice meal, and it is worth knowing which one you are having.
Blood pressure: 30 mg sodium. Nothing to manage.
Cholesterol: 5 g of saturated fat a parcel, all of it coconut flesh rather than coconut oil — which is a real distinction, because fresh grated coconut carries about 10 g of fibre and 3.8 g of protein per 100 g where the oil carries neither. That does not make the saturated fat disappear. It does mean this is the form of coconut the book keeps.
Swap it
Rice flour → ragi (finger millet) flour, up to half the weight. Darker, nuttier, considerably more fibre at 11.18 g per 100 g against rice flour's 2.81; the dough is harder to roll thin and wants an extra 20 ml of water.
Jaggery → cane jaggery or panela, 1:1.
Fresh coconut → frozen grated coconut, thawed, same weight. No loss. Desiccated, only as in the sourcing note.
Coconut-and-jaggery filling → the thick base of R114 Cherupayar Payasam, about 25 g a parcel. More protein, less sweet, excellent.
Banana leaf → parchment. Works mechanically, and loses the aroma that is the reason to make elayada rather than anything else.
Scale it
Do not crowd the steamer at scale. Parcels stacked without a gap steam unevenly and the ones in the middle stay gummy at the fold.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Assemble the parcels up to 6 hours ahead and keep them covered with a damp cloth in the fridge, unsteamed — this is the best way to make them for a crowd. Fridge 3 days steamed, in their leaves; the dough firms and is better re-steamed than microwaved. Freeze 2 months, steamed and cooled, in their leaves in a bag; steam from frozen for 12–15 minutes. This is the best-freezing sweet in the chapter, and a bag of twelve in the freezer is a genuine defence against the bakery.
Leftovers
Day-old elayada, unwrapped, sliced 1 cm thick and warmed in a dry pan until the cut faces are golden, is arguably better than fresh — the filling caramelises against the pan. Two slices with a black coffee is a decent breakfast.
Troubleshooting
Dough cracks when you flatten it: too dry, or it cooled. Wet your palms and knead again while it is warm; if it has gone cold, add a tablespoon of boiling water and knead it back.
Parcels leaked in the steamer: the dough was not sealed to itself, only wrapped, or the leaf split along a rib. Press the dough edges together firmly through the leaf, and trim ribs out at step 1.
Gummy at the fold after 25 minutes: the dough was too thick, or the steamer was crowded. Thinner and fewer.
Filling dry and gritty: desiccated coconut used without soaking, or the jaggery was in lumps rather than grated fine.
Leaf tore while folding: not softened. Three seconds over a flame changes the leaf completely.
Serve with
R111 Sulaimani, which is the correct pairing and cuts the coconut fat · R106, the chai strategy · at Karkidaka Vavu, alongside R108 Karkidaka Kanji · M09 varutharacha thenga, if you want a roasted-coconut filling instead
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