Ganapati special: Ukadiche Modak

For all Mumbaikar Ganesh festival is "THE" festival of year.B'lore,Karnataka also celebrates ganesh festival, but with bit of less glamour. As any pukka "Mumbaikar" I feel that ganesh festival is celebrated best in Mumbai,Maharashtra :) :)
This time Ganesh Chaturthi was on Sunday so I got time to prepare Naivedya (including Modak). Now in Mumai, we get modak in almost every shop (though with hefty price of Rs.10 per piece).Here we don't have any other option, so we had to settle with modak specially hand crafted by me :). The shape was not exactly what I would have liked, but taste was great.
Earlier I used to thought that modak is prepared only in Maharashtra, but I was wrong. The shape is specifically from Maharashtra, but preparation is also common to Oriya or eastern side food. In Orissa, it called as Pitha. They can be of different type, steamed or rice/made with rice floor/suji etc. They eat one more type of pitha called "Arisa pitha" which is nothing but "Anarase". When I tasted it first time I was so surprised that 2 states separated by miles have exact same sweet dish (with almost similar name) :).
Anyways, today's focus is on Ukadiche Modak.
Again preparation is simple, but skill is required to get the exact shape. Else you can prepare stuffed round balls which will still taste good.

Ingredients:
. For cover:
- 1 cup(heaped) very fine rice flour.In Mumbai/Pune you can get this rice floor easily (its called "Modak pith" itself).
- 1 spoon maida (refined flour). This is optional. Its used to add slight stickiness to rice floor cover.
- 1 tbl spoon salt
- 1 spoon oil/ghee
- 1 cup water
. For stuffing
- 1 full coconut, grated. Make 2 heaps of same.
- 1 heap of jaggery (i.e. 1/2 of grated coconut).
- 1-2 tbl spoon ghee
- cardamom powder and finely chopped dry fruits.

Preparation
. For cover:
1. Boil water in a pan. add salt and oil/ghee.
2. Take it down from gas(and switch is off). Now add rice flour (and maida). Mix well.
3. Again keep it on low flame for 5 min. Cover with lid.
4. Switch off the gas. Invert the pan over lid and keep it covered.
5. Once the flour cools down little bit, start kneading and make smooth dough. You can use water or oil to prepare dough.
. For stuffing:
1. Heat ghee/oil in non-stick pan.
2. Mix coconut and jaggery and then add to ghee/oil.
3. Cook till jaggery is completely melted and stuffing is dry (but still moist).
4. Add cardamom powder and dry fruits.
. Making modak
1. Round up a small ball of rice dough. Pat it into think sheet.
2. Now pinch sides of the rounded sheet. Pinch at least 4-5 times to give flower like appearance.
3. Add stuffing and then try to round up dough sheet. Get the petal like pinches together to get modak shape.
4. Once 4-5 modaks are prepared, put then on muslin cloth (water soaked) on keep it on steel strainer.
5. Steam it in cooker (without whistle) for 10-15 min (till you get whietish steam jet from cooker).
6. Serve modaks hot/cold with ghee.