Mahanandi

Golden Borugula Laddu under Evening Sunlight

How can one convey nostalgia? I am no wordsmith and sometimes words escape me, so I try it with my camera lens.

A nourishing and delightfully scented, not so sweet but fun kind of treat from my childhood days is murmura laddu. Also known as borugula mudda in Telugu and rice crispies in English.

During December and January months (Sankranthi time), when parents are busy with harvesting rice and sugarcane, grand parents prepare these crunchy, homely sweets for children with freshly popped murmura from rice battis and just minted 24 karat quality jaggery. Jaggery syrup is prepared and murmura are added - just these two ingredients and tiny touch of cardamom - that’s it. Magical, irresistible laddus would be ready to keep us children (mouths) busy.

I am happy that I am finally able to recreate this Sankranthi magic on Mahanandi. Though recipe looks simple, I know how difficult it is to prepare these kinds of sweets, so I measured and timed the process to make it fail proof and for decent results. Give it a try.

Preparing Jaggery Syrup for Murmura laddus

Recipe:

Murmura (borugulu, puffed rice) - one quart
Jaggery - one cup (powdered)
Water - one cup
Cardamom - 2 (seeds powdered)
To test jaggery syrup readiness - Keep a small plate with cold water ready by stove side.

In a big, sturdy, thick-bottomed vessel, add water and jaggery. Cook on medium-high heat. Jaggery melts and begins to concentrate. When it starts foaming like shown in the photo above, it reached the consistency we want for this recipe. To test, add few drops of jaggery syrup to the cold water. When pushed with fingers, if the syrup can be rolled to a round and keeps share without melting in spite of tilting the plate to different directions, it is done and the syrup is ready. This whole process takes about 15 to 20 minutes.

Constantly stirring, add murmura. Also sprinkle in cardamom powder. Within one or two minutes, murmura starts to soak up the syrup and comes together in to dry mass. Turn off the heat. Remove the pot from the stovetop to countertop.

Wait for about 5 minutes for murmura-jaggery mixture to cool down and then start making laddus. Take a spoonful of mixture into hands and press gently into round shape. Keep a bowl of cold water on the side. Dip your hands in-between laddu making to keep hands unsticky and cool. Or ladle off the whole mixture into a greased pan. Press firmly and evenly. Cut into squares and let it cool. Break along the lines to separate the pieces.

Makes about 12 medium sized laddus or squares.

Hot Murmura-Jaggery Mixture and Making of Laddus

Murmura (borugulu, puffed rice) laddus and squares
Fun Jaggery-Rice Crispy Treats From India for Kay’s JFI

Kitchen Notes:
1 quart = 2 pints = 4 cups = 32 fluid ounces =.95 liter
Murmura and Jaggery are available at local Indian grocery shops.
Prepare this sweet with fresh, crunchy tasting murmura only, for best results.
One more recipe for murmura laddu - from Cooking Medley

Cooking is an ultimate balance act, isn’t it? Take time to learn and practice to achieve that balance, the rewards are high. Not only good health, but also a balanced mood. Some ingredients and recipes are easy to balance and master. But for some, one needs yogi’s kind of patience and sadhana. Jaggery, particularly in savory recipes, is one such ingredient that I needed to practice a lot to achieve the balance. Consistency and quantity are difficult to explain and I had to rely on my flavor senses for guidance in my beginner days of cooking. I hope you do the same when you cook with jaggery in savory recipes, like the one I am posting today, as part of my weeklong Jihva jaggery journey.

Brinjal-Jaggery chutney (Vankaya-Bellam pacchadi) is a classic Andhra (Nandyala) recipe where young brinjals, dried red chillies and ginger are first roasted and then grinded together with jaggery, tamarind and salt. The result is a mouthwatering side dish with all 5 flavors and some extra smoky flavor, usually eaten with rice, ghee and dal or sambar. If you like baingan burtha, baba ghanouj style brinjal preparations, where brinjal is grilled and mashed, then this chutney is also your style.

Brinjals, Jaggery and Dried Red Chillies

Recipe:

8 young brinjals - ends removed and sliced lengthwise
8 dried red chillies
1 rupee coin sized ginger
1 red onion or shallot - sliced lengthwise
1 tablespoon each of powdered jaggery and tamarind juice
¼ teaspoon of salt or to taste

Heat two tablespoons of peanut oil in an iron skillet. Bring the oil to smoking point. Now add brinjal, onion and ginger. On high heat, grill them. Do not cook and soften but brown them -secret to tasty chutney. If you are one of those ‘gifted’ with charring or blackening all things you cook, then you need to use that gift here, my friend. Leave the care to the world and char the brinjals’ white flesh to your hearts content. Remove them to a plate. Add and grill dried red chillies for few seconds.

In a food processor or blender, take grilled brinjals, onion, ginger and dried red chillies. Add salt, tamarind juice and jaggery. Hit pulse button and coarsely puree. Remove to a cup. Traditionally popu or tadka (toasting cumin, mustard seeds and curry leaves in one teaspoon of oil) is added to the chutney at the end but this step is entirely optional. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don’t, depends on my time and patience.

Serve with rice, ghee and dal or with pappu chaaru/sambhar.

Brinjal-Jaggery chutney mixed with Rice in Pappu chaaru - Savory Jaggery Entry to Kay’s JFI

Cranberries, Orange (mandarin, battayi), Cloves, Palm Jaggery (Taati Bellam)

Before going in to weeklong JFI jaggery journey, I would like to know and I hope you all had nice time with your family and friends during Thanksgiving holiday weekend. For us, it was a working as well as relaxing weekend. I prepared some decent meals, read a funny book called ‘Food Moods’ and Vijay was working on his assignments and required readings. We mostly stayed home because of the weather here. It was raining and snowing. Yes, snow in Seattle. I didn’t expect that, but it also snows in Seattle. What a nice surprise.

Cranberries, chestnuts, pecan pie and plum (fruit) cake - these are the things I look forward to during holiday season in US, every year. Their rich color, beauty and taste brighten up otherwise dreary cold days here. Cranberries in particular. Their bitter-tart taste is perfect antidote for too much fancy food that is common during this season.

Last weekend among other things, I also prepared marmalade with cranberries. In addition to oranges and jaggery, I have added cloves on a whim and cloves fresh, refreshing aroma brightened up not only our breath but also our otherwise mundane morning jam-bread breakfast routine.

Cooking the marmalade

Recipe:

Cranberries - 2 to 2½ cups (12 ounces)
Oranges - 2 cups of cut fruit (6 seedless fruits, I used mandarins (battayi) for this recipe)
Palm Jaggery - 1 cup powdered
Cloves - 6
Water - 1 cup

Wash and remove bad cranberries. Peel orange and separate into segments over a bowl (to catch the juices). Powder the jaggery and measure. Make a fine powder of cloves.

In a heavy pot, bring one cup of water to a boil. Add jaggery and wait until jaggery melts. Add cranberries and orange pieces. Cook, until the fruit breaks down, turn to mush and come together to a firm quivering mass. Takes about 15 to 20 minutes. Just before turning off the heat, sprinkle powdered cloves. Cook few more minutes and turn off the heat. Let marmalade cool completely. Store in a tight lidded, clean jar and refrigerate.

Cranberry~Clove Marmalade & Toasted Bread
for JFI-Jaggery hosted by Kay of ‘Towards A Better Tomorrow’

Kitchen Notes:
Fills about 14 oz (400grams) jar.
I’ve prepared mildly sweet marmalade. Adjust jaggery quantity to suit your taste.
Recipe Source: My own creation.

Sugar cane Jaggery and Palm Jaggery ~ For this week’s Indian Kitchen

Jaggery and sugar are India’s gifts to the world!

I do not know how many of you know this but ancient Bharath (India) pioneered the sugar making technique. Harold McGee, the author of entertaining and educational cookbook “The Science and Lore of the Kitchen” describes in detail how thousands of years ago, India enamored the world with the taste and technique of sugar making. This is the first ’spice’ that was exported from India. These ancient traditions still continue and along with sugar, jaggery is also prominently used in Indian cooking.

There are two types of jaggery available in India as far as I know. One is from sugarcane and the second type is from Palmyra palm tree (toddy palm or taadi chettu) . Sugarcane juice (for cane jaggery) sap (for palm jaggery) from trees is boiled down hours and hours. And the concentrated liquid is poured into molds to dry. Depending on the mold used, you would see jaggery in different shapes- cylindrical blocks, smooth round balls and half spheres etc. Depending on the sweetness level and color, the jaggery is two types. Pale gold colored one - this is what’s available in most of the Indian grocery shops here in US. This is popular mainly because of my generation’s penchant for all things pale colored. Good, decent taste, I use it regularly in my cooking. But my parents and grand parents back in India prefer the dark colored jaggery. Aging or curing the freshly prepared jaggery for sometime will result in potently sweet, distinct flavored dark colored jaggery. For them, pale colored ones are inferior in taste. I agree that there is a significant difference between those two types. Because of this fact, often in our homes for marriages and special occasions, the dark colored jaggery is preferred to prepare sweetmeats.

When it comes to taste - jaggery has a distinct taste. English language, perhaps the most powerful tool and expression of current day culture, has millions of words but none of which are really good enough I think and there is no word in English that completely serves to describe the taste of Jaggery. If you have tasted one, cooked with one, smelled one, then you know the subtle sublime scrumptiousness Jaggery brings to a recipe. Otherwise, a translation attempt ‘tastes like molasses, brown sugar or maple syrup‘ is either an incomplete and false hint, for anyone who doesn’t know the taste of jaggery, or is simply annoyingly weak and unevocative.

Jaggery stores well. Once in 3 or 4 months, I buy a big block of jaggery from Indian stores. I break it using a knife and hammer. Place the knife in the middle of the block and lightly hit it with hammer. Jaggery breaks into pieces. Further gentle tapping with hammer results in small pieces and powdered jaggery. I keep what I need in a small container in kitchen cabinet and store the remaining pieces for later use in a Ziploc bag in the refrigerator. Just with 15 minutes work, I would be set for at least 3 months. I use jaggery in different traditional Indian preparations - to sweeten the curry sauces, for pappu chaaru and also to prepare sweets like payasam, kheer and cashew sweets etc. Back in home, in India, people often prepare sweets with jaggery. Particularly for naivedyam, jaggery sweets are preferred to sugar sweets. Our elders, they may not have degrees, but they do know where the ingredients come from and how they are made. They avoid sugar in naivedyam because after all sugar is processed by using dead animals bone meal.

One complaint I often hear about jaggery is presense of sand or dust particles in it. The reason for it is jaggery is still prepared in ancient way, in the fields. There will be harvesting of sugar cane going on one side and on the other end concentrating the sugar cane juice will be going on. Air carries some particles into this liquid. The farmers do filter the liquid before pouring into molds but one or two particles always find a way to join in. For some, these particles are reason why they avoid jaggery and prefer sugar. For me, I prefer sand particles to bonechar contamination anytime of the day. Atleast I know how to deal with jaggery impurities - melt and strain.

For the month of December, for Jihva - the online food blogging event, we the food bloggers are going to celebrate the goodness of Jaggery. All thanks to the new mom and the host of JFI, Kay, for her wonderful selection. Whether you are an already ordained admirer of jaggery by birth or it is your first time, join and (re)discover the subtle, sublime scrumptiousness of jaggery cooking, both in sweet and savory recipes.

Kuri Chestnuts Prepped for Stove-Top Roasting

Yay, with thanksgiving, the season of chestnuts is here!

I have already written how I was introduced to chestnuts here in US and how much I look forward to fresh chestnuts every year. The season is short, only 3 months. November, December and January is when you see fresh chestnuts in the market here. Also it is traditional for street vendors to roast chestnuts over charcoal fires and sell them in small quantities. See the image here. If you happen to find them in local winter festival fairs, do not miss a chance to taste them. You will be hooked like I did. I can compare the experience of fresh roasted chestnuts to murmura hot off from the munta in winter exhibition fairs-India.

Although they have a nut in the name, Chestnuts are anything but classic nuts. They are not oily like other nuts and they taste good. I gathered from the web that chestnuts have the lowest fat content of all major edible nuts, contain quality protein and no cholesterol. And they are high in carbohydrates, can be compared in nutritional value to brown rice.

In an article last year, I have written about roasting chestnuts in detail. Check it out. If this is your first time with chestnuts, do not forget to make a ‘+’ cut on one side of chestnut with a sharp knife (like shown in the image above), in order to avoid bursting the shell during cooking. Also use infrequently used cast iron skillet for roasting. My two tips.

Roasted Chestnuts (kuri) ~ Satisfying sweet snack to warm up winter days

How to roast chestnuts on stove-top: Method in detail
Kuri chestnuts purchased at Uwajimaya (asian grocery shop, Seattle)

Mount Rainier in the distance on this cloudy Thanksgiving day.

Thanksgiving day parade - Seattle downtown, on 24th (tomorrow).