Wednesday, September 16, 2009
She: Did you like the basundi??. This is my first try and I think its come out so well.
He: Yeah its good. 'Chakka Pradamam' is my favorite. Why don't u make it one day?
She: How is the 'Paal Kozhukattai'? My mother makes this often.
He: Tasty. But I loved the flavor of 'Chakka Pradamam' that I had in Trivandrum. Why don't u make it one day?
She: Our daughter is so fond of these 'Gulab Jamuns'. How abt you dear?
He: I like it too. But the taste of 'Chakka Pradamam' is still lingering in my mouth. Why don't u make it one day?
She: Honey what payasam do u want me to make on Vinayakar chadhurthi day?
He: How about....
She: 'Chakka Pradamam'. Is this wht you were trying to say?
He: Yeah. How did you know that???
My husband got a chance to spend a month or 2 in trivandrum during his early 20s and he had had this 'Chakka Pradamam' in one of his friend's house. He had been talking about this since our marriage. I too loved to make this for him. However, I never found the jackfruit in the market even once. Luckily, the 'Guruvayurappan temple' near our locality had hosted the onam celebration on a sunday, 2 weeks before. So we thought we would go and visit the temple. Another reason was, it was said the traditional onam lunch would be served in the afternoon. So, we thought it was a good chance to taste the 'Chakka Pradamam', my husband's all time favorite(I had never tasted it even once).We were there in the temple well in advance. Took part in the celebration and made our way to the lunch room. To our big shock there was a big line. With our 1.5 yr old daughter we thought it would be tough for us to stand in the line for more than an hr. Sadly we retreated. Having had pongal for the breakfast we didn't feel hungry. So we went for grocery purchase.Surprisingly, this time I saw the jackfruit in the grocery store. Picked one to surprise my hubby with his favorite the next day.
The next day I asked my husband if he had any idea about the ingredients. He said that he knew for sure that jackfruit was one of the ingredient(lol). So there I was googling for 'Chakka Pradamam', 'Chakka Pradamam recipe'. To my utter disappointment nothing popped up. Tried to grab some more info abt the end product from my hubby. Yeah.. we were in requirements gathering phase.
Me: Do you know if the the jackfruit was in pieces or was it mashed to a paste?
He: I couldn't feel the jackfruit
Me: So it was mashed. k. How about the color?
He: Dark brown.
Me: So its jaggery that has to added and not sugar.
With this information I headed to the kitchen and tried my own version of 'Chakka Pradamam'
So here you go 'Chakka Pradamam Ver. 1.1
Ingredients:
Jackfruit - 1 cup(finely cut, cooked in microwave for 10 min, and mashed well in a blender)
Jaggery - 1/4 cup
water - 1/4 cup
Milk - 1/2 cup
Coconut cream - 2 tbsp
honey - 1 tbsp
cashew - 5 pieces
ghee - 1/4 cup
Method:
1. Heat ghee in a pan and fry cashews till golden brown. Drain the cashews and keep it aside.
2. To the same ghee add cooked jackfruit and fry till all the moisture is absorbed.
3. Keep this paste aside.
4. Add water to the powdered jaggery and boil it for 5 min. Drain this mixture using a tea filter.(jaggery is said to contain dust particles. So its better to filter the mixture).
5. Now add the jackfruit paste to the jaggery mixture and allow it to boil till the mixture forms a thick paste.
6. Add milk and coconut cream and let it boil for 5 more min.
7. Garnish with cashews and honey(honey was added as jackfruit is prone to upset the stomach)
My husband liked this version of chakka pradamam. I boasted by saying that I didn't find the recipe in the net and I tried it by myself. He googled and got few results for his search on 'chakapradhamam'. The recipe was slightly different. Thats fine, mine was quite close to the original version...:).
I was planning to make some more pradamam with the jackfruit that I had used for decoration. And do you want to know what happened to them?. My little one so dutifully threw those pieces in the trash bag. Guess she didn't want another serving :D
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u hv a ncie blog dear..Thanks for visiting mine....
lovely pradhanam...
And dear amazing decoration. Keep it going. Don't forget to participate in our event at
www.innovativein-laws.blogspot.com
Nithya: Thanks!. Shall try to participate in the event.