We all loves pumpkins . So much so that we Assamese folks have a pitha or a ricecake using pumpkins . This article will teach you to make awesome lau palla pithas !!!

   Only the knife knows what goes on in the heart of the pumpkin . ~ Simone Schwarz – Bart

Ingredients :

1. One kilo rice
2. Two coconuts .
3. About two – three hundred grams of jaggery (according to taste) .
4. A pinch of salt .
5. 250 grams of ripe pumpkin .
6. Oil to fry the pithas ( mustard or refined )

 Procedure :

Wash and soak the rice for about two hours .Also peal the pumpkin and remove the seeds . Also cut them roughly into small pieces .

In the meantime melt the jaggery in about 200 ml of water . Once the jaggery melts completely , add the pumpkin into it and let it boil for some more time to become soft . Make sure that there are no lumps of jaggery in this mixture . When the pumpkin becomes fully mashable by hand , which off the flames and let it cool .

Remove the rice from the water and spread it on a newspaper sheet for about ten minutes . This will get rid of the access water . Then grind the rice to a fine flour in a grinder and mix it with the grated coconut . Mash the pumpkin to form a almost liquid sticky jaggery – pumpkin paste . Slowly add this paste to the rice flour and mix properly to make a dough . Shape this dough into small disc shapes .

After you are done shaping the dough into these shapes , heat oil in a shallow pan and fry them . Make sure that they do not touch each other and flip them over every minute or two so that they are evenly fried from both sides .

Remove them from the oil when their color becomes deep brown and they give out the nice aroma of pumpkin . Put them on a tissue or newspaper for about 5 minutes to remove the access oil . And you have your lau palla pitha ready to be served with a cup of strong Assam tea .