Jackfruit is my all time favorite fruit. I can eat a whole bowl of ripe jackfruit at any time:). During the vishu season, in my mom's place, we used to buy two big whole jack fruit for vishu kani and after vishu kani day, my patti used to make chakka varatti(jackfruit Halwa) in a large dabba and store it. I like to eat it as Chakka varatti too. She makes chakka pradhaman with chakka varatti which always be a hit for my Patti. I saw jackfruit last weekend near our Indian grocery store. Immediately I bought it. Took out the seeds from it and used half of the fruit as side dish for curd rice(!) and I wanted to make this chakka pradhaman with the remaining. Main motivation for making this was
Jaishree's post. I was so tempted after seeing her payasam. Lol...I saved it for today cos its my husband's birthday. I didn't make chakka varatti first. I just used the jackfruit direcly for making payasam/pradhaman. I got the recipe from my grandma. This is the traditional chakka payasam she makes everytime. Here goes the recipe...
Ingredient:-
- Jackfruit Pieces - 20
- Jaggery -according to the available quanity of Jackfruit paste
- ghee - 2 tbsp
- Coconut pieces - few
- Cashew - few
- Coconut milk/regular full fat milk - 1/4 cup (can also increase the quantity)
Jackfruit Paste:- First pressure cook the jackfruit pieces upto one whislte. Let it cool and grind it into a fine paste. If you are going to make the payasam immediately, then measure how much paste you have and take jaggery according to the ratio of 1:1 (equal amount). I made this paste on tuesday and I refrigerated this paste in an air tight container. I used it today.
When you are ready with the paste, just take equal amount of jaggery and keep it aside. Take a heavy bottomed pan, put the paste first and add 1/4 cup water to it and let it melt first. Once the paste becomes watery, add the jaggery to it and mix it well and let it boil under low flame for another 7 mts. You can see bubbles coming out. Now its time to add coconut milk or regualr milk and mix it with the ingredients and let it boil for another couple of mts. You can smell the jackfruit, jaggery and coconut. Its means payasam is ready. Now take a small pan, pre heat ghee, fry coconut pieces and cashews to golden brown and pour it on top of paysam and mix it well. Don't forget to keep on stirring the payasam otherwise jaggery will stick in to your pan.
I used regular full fat milk instead of coconut milk. Also we can add more ghee in between too. I didn't add that much ghee. I just used 2 tbsp (which is too much for my hubby dear). We can also use a lot of coconut pieces which i reduced because of my husband.
For Chakka Varatti recipe, please visit
here...
