Haalittu / Rice Noodles

Haalittu is an age old delicacy, prepared using a handful of ingredients. Haalittu is nothing but thick rice noodles, which is prepared especially during Ganesh festival in my household. This year I prepared both sweet and savory versions of this dish for breakfast. This simple, rustic dish is an absolute pleasure to eat.

Ingredients:

Dosa Rice – 2 cup

Jaggery –according to your taste.

Coconut – ½ cup (for sweet) ¼ cup (for savory)

Clarified butter/ghee – 1 Tbsp.

Mustard seed- 2tsp

Urad dal (black gram dal)- 1 tsp.

Dried red chilly – 1 each (for sweet and savory)

Curry leaves

Salt to taste

Method:

1. Wash, soak Dosa rice for 3 hours, grind this into a smooth paste with water used for soaking and salt.
2. Pour this into a thick pan/kadai, adjust batter consistency (it should be like rawa dosa batter or like milk) and add little clarified butter.

3. Stir continuously until it forms a big ball and cooks.

4. Remove from the flame .Once it cools down, take small portions of it and roll this into a ball, and put this into a chakli press with thengolalu disc (which has bigger holes) attached, press this and steam cook for 30 min.

5. Once rice noodles are cooked, remove it from the steamer.

6. Cool and break it into pieces .Cool the pieces and keep them aside.(You can prepare this on the previous evening as well)

Now, to make the seasoning :

For the sweet version:

1. First mix grated coconut with grated jaggery and keep it aside.
2. Add oil into the kadai. Season it by adding mustard, urad dal, red chilli, curry leaves. To this add the thick rice noodle and mixture of jaggery and coconut and mix nicely.

For khara/savory version: Do same as sweet version but without jaggery.

Note: You can also use rice flour instead of grinding dosa rice. In this case first boil water with salt and clarified butter. To this add rice flour and follow other steps mentioned as above.