Ingredients

Method

Clean, wash and soak separately, rice and dhal for two hours. Grind separately. Mix the ground batter together well, adding salt to taste and some water if necessary. The batter should not be very thick. Tie the mouth of the vessel with a thick cloth, and keep aside for ferment for about two hours. Urid Dhal is the fermentor. Fermentation varies according to ambient temperature and there in winter it will take longer than in summer. By experience you will come to know gradually how it works in your area.

Grate jaggery and mix it with the batter and dissolve it completely.

Keep water to boil in a thondor, (a special Mangalorean vessel, for steaming) to the level of the perforated central plate. Now a days, you can use a deep pressure cooker, with Idli receptors, available in the market. When the batter has risen, pour a little into small metal saucers, their inner surface brushed with oil with the finger tips and batter filled to half their depth. Place these saucers, on the central plate of the thondor, after the water has started to boil and close it.

Steam for fifteen minutes or till quite cooked. Remove the saucers and place them downwards on a clean table, and spread a wet cloth dipped in cold water, over them and cool them well or cool them in any other way. When cooled remove the Sannas by prying them out with your fingers. As the first set is getting cooled, fill the second set of metal saucers with the batter and steam accordingly. Steam each time as many as the thondor holds.

Note: to ferment batter, instead of urid or yeast, non vegetarians, use toddy which is a fermented liquid taken from the fruit of the palm tree.. For batter of about one and half kilograms of rice, about half or three quarter bottle of toddy is used.

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