Akki Roti

I still remember the day when I ate this for the first time. I was staying with my uncle and aunt in Bangalore. And the daughter-in-law of their very close friend was to come home and teach my aunt how to make this. She had learnt this from her North Karnataka friends and had mastered it.

After that session, Akki Rotis became a regular feature at my aunt's place as well as mine. It is now a regular even at Amma's place. I had posted this once before in a different avatar. Here's the original recipe.

1 cup Rice Flour
2 tsp Green Chilli paste (or 2-3 Green Chillies, finely chopped)
1/4 cup Coconut, scraped
2 tbsp Oil
1/4 cup Coriander, chopped
2 Onions (or half a bunch of Spring Onions), finely chopped
Salt to taste
Oil for frying

Mix all the ingredients together (except the oil for frying!!) and add some water to make it a thick dough. (This is not a batter, it should resemble shortcrust pastry or chapati dough and not dosa batter.) Make small balls of this dough and flatten them on a greased plastic sheet.

Place the flattened dough on a hot tawa and toast evenly on both sides. This is also meant to be enjoyed with a dollop of butter. We enjoyed it with some Aavakaya.

A very traditional recipe from Uttara Kannada goes to Asha as one of the non Dakshina Kannada recipes for the RCI Karnataka event.

Green Akki Roti

In my earlier post on Rice Rotis, I talked about the Akki Roti of North Karnataka. That is what I set out to make as promised. But I got lazy and the result of my laziness turned out like this.

The original recipe (that I learnt from a friend, Ashwini) calls for onions, chillies, ginger, coriander leaves, coconut, oil and salt. These ingredients are mixed together to form a firm dough that is flattened on the skillet and toasted. Someone told me to substitute spring onions for the onions and use the leaves as well. I had a bunch of spring onions and enough rice flour at home, so I decided to make this for dinner one night. My recipe that night called for:

1 bunch Spring Onions
1 ½ cups Rice Flour
¼ cup Scraped Coconut
2-3 green Chillies
½ cup Coriander leaves, chopped
1” piece of ginger
Salt to taste
1 tbsp Oil
Oil to shallow fry

But lazy me decided to use the food processor instead of waiting for S to come home and chop the spring onions for me. I fitted the food processor with the chopper blade and placed the spring onions and the leaves, the coriander leaves, chillies, and ran it for a minute or two. Then I changed to a dough blade and added the coconut, oil, rice flour and salt. With the help of a little water, I made the dough. Only, it looked more like batter. And it was all green. The spring onions and the coriander had gotten ground instead of getting chopped.

To make the rotis, I heated a skillet and dropped a blob of the batter on it, spreading it a little bit. I put a few drops of oil around the batter and turned it around after it had browned. After both the sides had cooked, I took it off and gobbled it up.

Traditionally served with a dollop of butter, I ate the Akki Roti by itself. My husband, S, ate it with some Avakaya pickle that we brought back last week from Hyderabad. All experiments are not failures, are they?

Tandlya Roti Ani Lasnye Chitni (Rice Roti and Garlic Chutney)

Though I can speak Konkani, my mother tongue, very fluently, I am quite terrible at transliterating words. So, please bear with me.

Rotis made of rice flour are very popular in many parts of Karnataka. The Akki Roti of North Karnataka (something I will cover in a few weeks’ time) is quite famous, and very very tasty. The rice rotis of Saraswats are similar to the Akki-rotis of the Coorgis. (Not that I am expert. I just happen to have traveled across the state and sampled a lot of local food in the process.) Now, I am also told that this is made in Bengal too. Maybe all the rice eating regions have their own versions of rice rotis

This Amchi version is, again, something Amma didn’t make too often, but relished whenever she got a chance. I used to bring rice flour from Madras by the kilo as I had never seen it in stores here. The Spencer’s Hypermart has opened in Gurgaon and I get, among other south Indian things, Ambika Appalams, rice flour and L.G. Hing. Now that I get rice flour in the local market, I can stop using it so sparingly and make these rotis more often.

Rice Roti Ingredients:

250 g Rice Flour
¾ cup water
Salt to taste
A little rice flour for rolling

Bring the water and salt to boil in a vessel and add the rice flour, a little at a time. Keep mixing the mixture while cooking on a low flame. Add more or less rice flour depending on the consistency. Take this off the flame and keep mixing it. The dough must be soft and moist, yet not sticky or watery. Make small balls and roll them in generous amounts of rice flour. (Considerably more than what you’d use while making rotis or phulkas). Cook the rotis on a tawa without any oil. When one side is cooked, turn the roti around and press it with a piece of cloth so that it cooks evenly and puffs up. Serve with garlic chutney.

Garlic Chutney Ingredients:
3-5 pods Garlic
4-5 tbsp Grated Coconut
2-3 Red Chillies (More or less depending on taste and spice tolerance levels)
½ tsp Tamarind paste
Salt to taste

Grind all the ingredients together in a mixer using a little hot water. I usually add about ½ a tsp of Kashmiri Chilli powder for the colour.

Those of you who aren’t familiar with Saraswat cooking will realize through my blog that 75-80% of our cooking uses coconut. In fact, in Mangalore and other parts of Dakshina and Uttara Kannada districts, the status of a family is determined by the number of coconuts used per day. I tend to use about 2 coconuts every 3 months or so. Again, I use it sparingly, more out of need than health or other reasons. Amma keeps scraped coconut ready for me when I visit her and I store it for months in the deep freezer, taking out just the quantity I need. I don’t venture out attempting to buy coconuts locally and scrape them for my use. When I run out, I cook without it.