What I did from Jackfruit Leaves?

You have to travel to any typical South Indian town or city. For most of the North India, South India means Chennai. But please check India map. There is more than Chennai. And Idli is associated with every south Indians. That is just very common.

Idli is the famous and most casual, common Indian breakfast recipes. If you have the interest to note south Indian recipes vegetarian, you should not miss the recipe of making idli. There is a typical traditional style idli stand of stainless steel to bake idlis. Apart from the usual idli stand there are ways of making your own idli stand. This is more exciting to taste.

You should definitely learn how to make your own idli stand using jackfruit leaves. This is the typical style followed in the regions of Mangalore. The aroma and the taste after the idlis are baked is very different from the usual ones. To be more precise, this is Kadubu, not Idli.

Join the leaves and pin them together to form a shape of a cup. Into this cup pour the batter and bake. That makes a lovely aromatic idli. Locally in tulu language it is called as Kotte Kadubu.

You will need clean fresh leaves from the tree of jackfruit and few sticks to prick into the leaves for holding them together.

Make your own idli stand from jackfruit leaves.

Hold 2 leaves overlapping each other at the tip and fix then up with a small stick. At the junction, place 2 more to form a cross shape and fix them up with more pricking sticks. Refer below images so that my explanation makes sense.

It is like and art of weaving the basket for holding idli batter.

Pick any 2 adjacent side of any of the 2 leaves. Slightly twist at the joint junction, get them close and pin them up. This forms one of the walls of the batter holder. See below in the pic.

Do similarly for all the sides and cover up. The twisting will ensure that there is no scope for batter to leak. When all the sides are pinned, it forms a structure like a small deep basket.

These jackfruit leaves baskets are perfect to steam bake the idli.

Once baked, peel open the leaves to reveal the most aromatic Kadubu you have ever tasted. You have to make sure that you remove off all the sticks used to pin up the leaves.