It’s palm season. This is the time to make all kinds of delicious food with palm juice. Palm pitha is one of them. You can make several different kinds of pitha with palm. This cooking feature is arranged around a few varieties of palm pitha.
Palm pitha in banana leaf
Ingredients: 2 cups palm juice, 5 cups rice flour, 1½ cups sugar, salt to taste, 1 cup grated coconut, 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon yeast, 2 ripe bananas, and 32 pieces of banana leaf (washed and wiped clean).
Method: Mix the palm juice thoroughly with the rice flour, sugar, salt and grated coconut. In a separate cup, mix the yeast into the milk, then add it to the mixture. Mix all the ingredients together very well. Now blend the bananas thoroughly and mix them into the batter — this will make the pitha soft. Let the mixture rest for two hours.
Take a piece of banana leaf and place two tablespoons of the mixture on it. Cover with another piece of banana leaf and press down gently. Place the banana-leaf pitha on a pan or griddle and cover with a lid. Keep the heat on medium. Leave it for five to six minutes. Once the bottom leaf shows light char marks, flip it over. Cover again for another three to four minutes. Then remove the pitha. Make all the pithas this way, one by one.
Palm bora pitha
Ingredients: 3 cups rice flour, 5 cups palm juice, a little salt, 3 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder, water as needed, and soybean oil as needed.
Method: First, separate the seeds from the palm fruit. Take enough water in a pot and squeeze the palm seeds in it to extract the juice. Then pour the palm juice into a thin cotton cloth and hang it overnight so all the excess water drains out. Mix the dry rice flour, sugar and baking powder together, then add the palm juice to make a pitha batter. If the batter needs to be thinned once it has thickened, use a little water.
Heat oil in a pan, then fry spoonfuls of the batter, shaped into fritters, until golden brown. Serve the palm bora hot.