Simili

Ingredients:

1/2 cup ragi flour

hot water as needed

1/4 cup + 2 tablespoon jaggery powdered

1/4 cup coconut grated

1/2 cup peanuts - roasted and deskinned

1/8 teaspoon dry ginger powder (optional)

2 teaspoon ghee

a pinch salt

Instructions:

Take ragi flour and a pinch of salt in a plate or bowl. Add hot water (approx 3 tablespoon) to the flour one spoon at a time and mix well with your hands.

If lumps are forming, break it well. Take some flour and press it in your hand. It has to holds its shape like a kozhukattai and if you crush it, it has to loosen up. 

Make puttu out of this ragi flour using puttu steamer (kola) or put a cotton cloth in a idli plate and transfer the flour to the idli plate.

Steam cook (like cooking idli) it around 15 min over a medium flame. After that, let it cool down a little bit and transfer the cooked flour to a plate and keep aside. The consistency of cooked flour/puttu has to be soft and smooth. If yours has many lumps, just put it in a mixer and grind it a bit to remove lumps.

Dry roast coconut till it becomes golden brown. While coconut is almost roasted, add cardamom along with coconut. Just roast it for few seconds and transfer these to separate plate. Let it cool down. 

Now take the roasted coconut, cardamom and roasted peanuts in a dry mixer, grind it into a coarse or fine powder depending upon your preference. Do not grind this too much.

Now add this ground powder to cooked ragi puttu. Add dry ginger powder (optional) and powdered jaggery. Mix it well with your hands for 3 to 5 min. Good mixing helps to melt the jaggery and binds the flour.

Now, add 2 tsp ghee and mix. Make equal sized balls from this mixture. Ragi simili balls are ready to enjoy!!

Notes

Grind coconut and peanuts into a coarse powder or smooth powder. It is totally up to you.

Adjust jaggery as per your taste.

Adding coconut will give this dish a fantastic flavor and taste. If you want to store this balls a few days, skip coconut.