This is my first post in the second year of blogging. On this first anniversary I thank WordPress team for their fantastic support, readers & fellow bloggers for their continuing support and my family, relatives & friends for their kind cooperation, invaluable assistance & honest reviews. I also thank Lord Ganesha by posting the most appropriate recipe for Modhagam that we usually offer to Him on the festival of Ganesh Chathurthi. I have always been delighted to share our heirloom recipes in this space, and now I share a new method that I found very helpful for making soft, smooth dough for modhagam.
Modhagam Recipe:
My childhood friend’s grandmother used to offer delicious modhagam to the pillaiyar on chathurthi thithi of every month, and I still remember her melt-in-mouth modhagam with sweet fillings. So I would prefer to set her soft dumplings as a benchmark for my recipe. Here I have posted modhagam of different shapes with various fillings so that you can try the one you like the most for the upcoming Ganesh Chathurthi. Let’s look into the recipe for modhagam :
Dough making:
It is the trickiest part of this recipe as we all like to relish soft silky modhagam rather than hard or cracked dumpling. So it is required to use hot boiling water to make the perfect dough. But it is quite difficult to handle the heat and knead the dough without any lumps. Hence I use hand mixer with kneading attachment (as shown below) that comes in handy while mixing & kneading the hot dough with no hassle.
Ingredients:
- Rice flour – 1 cup ( I used store-bought flour)
- Water – 1 to 1½ cup
- Salt – ¼ tsp
- Sesame oil – 1 tsp
Cooking Method:
- Heat a pan with water.
- Add salt & oil into the boiled water.
- In a large mixing bowl add rice flour.
- Pour hot water over rice flour and mix them using hand mixer (at medium speed) until smooth.
Tips for making the dough:
- To avoid the dough becoming sticky, we need to pour water gradually and check its consistency while kneading. For 1 cup of rice flour I used 1 to 1½ cup of water, but you may have to adjust this depending on the water-absorbing quality of rice.
- If you do not have hand mixer you can use a wooden spatula for mixing, wrap the dough in a muslin cloth and then knead well so that you don’t have to bear the heat.
Fillings (pooranam):
Traditional Chickpeas fillings
First we need to cook chickpeas (Bengal gram or kadalai paruppu) until soft (not mushy) and grind into a powder before adding into jaggery syrup.
Nutty sesame fillings
We have to powder the sesame seeds after washing & dry roasting them and then mix them with powdered jaggery in medium flame.
Healthy greengram fillings
We need to roast, pressure cook and mash lentils before adding jaggery syrup.
How to stuff the pooranam using modhagam mould:
Delicious coconut fillings
We can grind the coconut pieces into coarse powder using mixer grinder rather than using coconut grater or scraper.
Savory blackgram fillings
First we have to soak lentils and then grind into a coarse paste (without adding water) along with green chillies & ginger; you can steam or pressure cook this lentil mixture; cooked lentils can be refrigerated for an hour (as it helps to loosen them up nicely) before adding into the tempering.
Tips for making pooranam:
- Adding grated coconut into any filling whether sweet or savory helps to enhance the flavour.
- We need to grease our hands and moulds while forming the dough into desired shape.
Steaming modhagam:
We can grease the steam plate (or line the steam plate with wet cloth) and steam them for 5 to 7 minutes.
You can also refer to my other recipes for Vinayagar Chathurthi here.
Wish I could have these delicacies
Come over here! 🙂 Thanks Rita.
You are the real kitchen’s angel. Fantastic post.
Thank you so much!
Delicious…..can I reblog this???
Yes, you can. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
This is my first time….. how can I reblog?
I think you may have to open my blog in the Reader, and then go to Modhagam post and click on sharing button to reblog it. Hope this may work for you, lets see.
Ok….thanks…
I did….. But full thing did not come….what do I do???
Yes, this is how reblog works, it will show the first few lines followed by a link to my post.
Ok…..thank you so much for guiding me.
Can you give me your link??? Then I can add it to the post.
Happy blog anniversary! ?? yummy modhagams ?
Thanks a lot !
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lovely modakams, Meghala. I personally love the coconut jaggery filled one.
Thanks a lot !
This looks delicious! Would love to try it someday!
Thanks, and thanks for stopping by !
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Thanks for all your efforts! Will visit your site soon !
I love modagam – miss this. I should try it. But the Sri Lankan version is a bit different. I should post that one day. By the way, it looks to pretty made with that mold
Oh ! Nice ! Looking forward to your recipe for Modhagam as well!