More on thin pastry trail. Pootarekulu from Andhra, India. Updated.

Ready for more on the thin pastry sheet trail that we’ve been discussing on this blog in the last couple of weeks.     Ammini Ramachandran sent a fascinating video of an Indian thin pastry from Andhra, India.

Then Uma Satyavolu sent these memories of pootarekulu, as these sheets are called.  Not so much on how they are made because that’s a professional job.  More on how they are layered with ghee and powdered sugar for events at the time of weddings and of imminent birth.   Thanks, Uma, for such fascinating background.  I specially love the idea of steel drums full of these paper thin sheets.

Update.  Uma has asked me to post this update.

Rachel:

I’ve made a few small but significant changes! Could you please, please post this instead of the other version?

Also, I’ve often wondered about the similarity between Ethiopean/Eritrean injera and appam/attu/dosa: fermented batter cooked on a griddle and eaten with stew/sauce. So the Eritrean rice-pastry connection is interesting. But the odd thing is that pootarekulu are fairly specific as a culinary and culturalphenomenon; they are not even that well-known in the next district over. Or if they are, they are only so as an idiosyncratic taste.  It would have to be a fairly isolated trade-route for such a selective and isolated transfer of technology.

Regards,

Uma

My parents were both from the Godavari districts (East and West). So although I grew up in Hyderabad (the Big City which is in the Telangana region of the state), and always considered myself not very Andhra,  it’s been one of those things that is quintessentially “Home.”

Pootarekulu are literally, “smeared sheets” because they are made by smearing rice paste on hot surfaces (as the video you posted shows) and are bought as rice sheets and assembled at home.

They are popular throughout the Godavari region, but most prized in “Konaseema”-the Corner island part of East Godavari. When my mother used to call in the vendor who cried ‘pootarekulu” in the outskirts of Hyderabad, it was always a treat.

I remember the time my mother said, “Oh, please, we are from the Godavari (region),” (meaning, you shouldn’t try to quote high prices, as we know what they usually cost). The man selling the sheets from the woven basket (about 3 feet in circumference) which he transported on the back of a bicycle said: “Of course, you’re from the Godavari; if you weren’t, you’d be asking me if they were sheets/leaves to hang from the doorways!”

You buy the sheets from people who make them-they are, as far as I know, never made at home in normal households–by the hundred. They look like translucent foolscap paper sheets, and the women of the household assemble them for special occasions. This is especially true of the bride’s going away after the wedding, and for seemantam (baby shower-like ceremonies usually held in the seventh month of pregnancy).

Pootarekulu (along with chalimidi, ariselu, and sunni-undalu) are traditional sweets that are sent with the bride to the in-laws when she leaves her home after the wedding.  Huge amounts (big steel-drums full of them) arrive at the new in-laws’ home. They then  send the sweets round to friends, neighbours, and relatives to announce that their new daughter-in-law has arrived.  Pootarekulu are usually eaten as a tiffin/tiffen (snack)-with afternoon coffee or tea.

I used the phyllo dough analogy because, essentially, it is assembled like baklava: lay down a sheet, dampen with a clean, slightly wet cloth, brush liberally with molten ghee (clarified butter), and sprinkle liberally and evenly with powdered sugar. Then lay another sheet on top, and repeat. The process is tricky for a beginner, because if the towel is too wet, the sheet turns to starch and sticks to the towel.

Unlike baklava, after six or seven layers, it is folded into a neat packet using more ghee and wet-cloth application to keep it all moist and compact. The ghee then solidifies with the powdered sugar, and gives it a very disticntive taste and mouth-feel.

Its flavour is entirely dependent upon the quality (and, to be fair, quantity) of ghee. Without enough ghee, it can be papery and flaky, and that’s one thing good pootarekulu cannot be.

I’ve lived away from India for twenty years now, and the last time I went to Andhra Pradesh, it was being sold in sweets shops and even some supermarkets, which was not the case when I left, so that’s a good thing, I think.
I could go on on about it because it is bound up with my nostalgia  for the Godavari country, which is very fertile, and green with paddy fields and coconut trees and canals and temples. So I will refrain.

Thanks for the pleasure of thinking about pootarekulu: I miss them more as time passes. Sadly my American-born, non-Andhra, non-Indian husband did not take to the pootarekulu as well as he did to most other things Andhra, including Gongura, a relative of the hemp-leaf, and also an iconically Andhra food.

More food for thought. Another round up soon.  And many thanks, Uma.

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