Jackfruit

On a recent trip to Mysore, we bought a jackfruit at the vegetable market.

For cutting a jackfruit, you need:

• A large knife, preferably a professional style one.
• 1 cup of cooking oil.
• sheets of newspaper, on which to rest the fruit.
• Containers for the pieces.

Method:

• To find the correct point at which to cut a jackfruit, it take experience. And  I havent reached there yet. 🙂
• Coat the knife blade with oil, and apply some to your hands as well. There is a lot of stickiness inside the fruit, and the oil prevents it from transfering onto your hands and knife.
• Cut the fruit carefully, to avoid unnecessary damage the the pieces inside.
• Now apply oil on your hands, and carefully seperate the pices from the skin. This needs patience, and quite a bit of strength as well. Not the mention  stamina, to stand in the same place for well over an hour to get all the peices out.

The strings and seeds may be kept aside for adding into curries/ rasam. The poky skin, however, can be gotten rid of. Also be sure to throw away the oil used. Its unusable after applying on the knife and hands.

This is by far, the most difficult fruit to cut. But one must say: the fruits of this labour are definitely sweet!! 😉

Enjoy!!!

Sambhar Podi

Recently a sister of mine asked me for this recipie. She tried making sambhar with the sambhar powder available in shops. But it definately didnt taste good. So she asked me for this one. So here it is! 🙂

This is probably the most popular recipie in the whole of South India. Of course, there are variation from place-to-place, family-to-family. This is what we use in my family.

Ingredients

1 cup coriander seeds
1 cup chana dal
2 tsp methi seeds (fenugreek)
4tsp urad dal
2 large handfuls dry red chillies

Method:

• Dry roast all the ingredients together till the dalls look golden brown in colour and lose their raw look.
• Once cooled, grind the mixture to a fine powder.
• Store in an air-tight container.

Sunnundalu

This is probably the healthiest sweet I have come across, not to mention the easiest.

Ingredients:

1 cup Urad dal
1 cup sugar
approx 1/2cup ghee (clarified butter)

Method:

• Dry roast the urad dal till lightly golden brown in colour
• Set aside to coll off
• Once cooled, grind it to a fine powder
• Using a fine sieve, sift the flour, and keep grinding till all the dal is fine-ground.
• Measure the sugar and grind finely and add to the dal.
• Add the ghee slowly while mixing. Keep adding till the sweet bind together. Add the ghee in small increments, to prevent the sweet from turning too soft.
• Roll into small balls.

Store in an air-tight container.