Poka mithoi l Spiced rice flour balls (laddu) from Assam
These laddus are made with rice flour, jaggery and a blend of warm spices, predominantly peppercorn.
Ingredients
- 2½ cup rice flour ( I used store bought glutinous rice flour)
- 1-1½ tsp whole black peppercorns
- ½ tsp fennel (saunf) seeds
- ½ tsp carom (ajwain) seeds
- 1 cup jaggery shavings
- ½ cup water
Instructions
- In a small pan, add the peppercorn, fennel and carom seeds and roast over low heat till they leave a nice aroma. Make sure not to burn.
- Remove from heat and grind coarsely in a mortar and pestle. You can use a spice grinder too, but do not make it powdery.
- In a bigger pan, add the rice flour and place over low to medium heat. Stir constantly till it starts to leave a nice aroma. Do not let it burn. This took me about 10 minutes.
- Remove the pan from heat and transfer the rice flour to a bowl to avoid overcooking in the hot pan.
- Remove about one cup of the flour mixture to help in rolling and storing the balls.
- In a pan, add the jaggery and water and bring to a simmer over low to medium heat.
- Keep stirring the jaggery mixture till a single thread consistency is achieved. Dip the cooking spoon into the syrup. Take a little of the syrup from the spoon with your index finger and with the index finger and the thumb, try to press the fingers and pull them apart. If you see a thread forming, that means that the syrup is ready.
- Mix in the ground spice mixture.
- Reduce the heat to low and add the rice flour in batches. Keep stirring.
- As soon as the mixture comes together and is lumpy, remove from heat and onto a plate. It does not matter if there are streaks of rice flour in the mixture, it will all come together later.
- Lightly fold in the mixture a little; be careful, it will be hot.
- Quickly, shape the mixture into 12 - 13 balls. You can use a some of the extra roasted flour that we saved earlier to help in binding the poka mithoi.
- Roll the balls in the rice flour and keep aside.
- Initially, the poka mithoi may not form perfect balls. But, as it cools, you can give them a second hand and reshape them. The idea is to get them into some shape before the mixture cools down and then fine tune it later.
- Serve or if you want to store them, place them in air tight containers and roll in some roasted flour. Enjoy!