Keera (Cucumber) Halwa

I try to watch some of the cookery shows and this recipe was noted down during one of the telecasts of Mallika Badrinath. I missed the introduction part of the recipe. All I could gather was, this is a Mangalore special sweet and she in fact mentioned the traditional name of it, which sounded like a tongue twister to me. I had written in my book as Kheera sweet. I call it halwa now, because of the texture of the sweet. I am not sure if it has to be this way or not. A sweet is a sweet. I would like to know the real name of it from my readers.

On first bite, my husband said, it reminds him of Thiruvathirai kali. I too felt the same. May be its due to the common rice and jaggery mix. Anyways on to the recipe now.

You need

Medium sized cucumber- 1, peeled and grated

Powdered jaggery - 1 1/2 cup

Rice flour - 1 cup

Grated coconut - 1/2 cup

Ghee - 2 tblspoon

Roasted cashews for garnish

The orginal recipe says use raw rice. It has to be soaked for 2 hrs. I used rice flour instead. Grind the rice flour(or soaked rice), jaggery and coconut to a fine paste. You can sprinkle some waterwhile grinding. Stir in the grated cucumber. The batter consistency should be like that of idli batter. Adjust the consistency by adding water. Not much will be required since it will be taken care of the water in the cucumber.

Heat a kadai with a tablespoon of ghee. Pour the batter. Keep stirring and add ghee at intervals to prevent sticking. This should take around 10 minutes. When it comes together, pour onto a greased plate and press it down evenly. When warm, mark into squares and decorate with roasted cashews.

After tasting the sweet, I felt the batter will make good pancakes/ vella dosai.

This is my contribution to Sia's RCI-Udupi & Mangalore, an event started by Lakshmi