Ingredients:

• 8 cups – rice(ukda chawal), boiled.
• 15 – alu leaves with brown stems.
• 10 – red dry chillies.
• 1 inch – turmeric/haldi.
• A little – salt, to taste.

Method:

1. Wash the rice well, and soak it for 2 hours.
2. Pick the leaves. Remove the stems, which can be used for other recipes. After washing the leaves, roll them and cut them into small lengths.
3. Grind the soaked rice, with chillies and turmeric, to a fine dough.
4. Mix the cut leaves, with the dough and blend thoroughly.
5. Fill water in the thondor, reaching below the centre plate. On the centre plate, spread a muslin cloth or a clean banana leaf, and spread the dough on it.
6. Start steaming the dough in the thondor and when it is done (when a fork is pierced in the cake, no batter should stick to it), put off the stove.
7. Pour sufficient water, in the lower basin of the thondor, so that it will be able to boil, without evaporating, for an hour or so.
8. Spread a cloth, or banana leaf on the middle tray of the thondor, and spread the dough on it.
9. Or place the dough in a round vessel, about 1 or 2 inch high, preferably of aluminium, and spread the dough in it.
10. Place it on the inner tray of the thondor.
11. Start the stove, and let the water boil and steam the dough.

Recipe courtesy of Walter