Thursday, March 22, 2012

Manoharam / Sweetish crunchy Jaggery snack

I am blogging after quite a break. Well busy cooking ;-) and lazy to sit and pen down. So no excuses. It was fun cooking. I was revisiting some of  my recipes and relishing them. So I promise there are more interesting and unique recipes to come. I've done them all and clicked away pics and I should post them soon.

This is a sweet dish I did during the Karthigai. Way back in November. It came out very yummy. I ate this recently at grandsweets Chennai. I was always enchanted by this sweet and that pushed me to try this out.
This dish is sweet and crunchy
Here goes the recipe

Things we need

Rice - 5 cups
Urad dal - 1 cup
Salt - very little
Butter - 4 spoons (solid state)
Oil - for deep frying
Jeera - a little

Jaggery
Cardamom
Dry Ginger powder - 1 spoon
Rice flour - 2 spoons

The achu or the Murukku maker.

Wash and drain both of these, strain, drain, and dry them. Have them ground into a powder from the "machine " (as it is called in India)
Else just take rice flour and urad dal flour in the same proportion.
Sieve them well.

Now in a big bowl, take butter, add salt, jeera, whisk them well. Don not add too much salt, remember it is a sweet dish. In one part of the bowl, mix and make dough with water. I am prescribing this method as it would prevent browing of the murukku. If we knead the whole flour into dough, the last murukkus will come out in very dark color.

Now, Press them into the Achu or the murukku maker. Use this mould plate.

Then deep fry them. This is called Thenkozhal. Keep it in a dry container and allow it to cool. Break them into pieces.

Now the manoharam part.
Measure the thenkuzal in cups. For every cup of Thenkuzal take 3/4 th of a cup of Jaggery.

How to make the paagu
Melt the jaggery in a thick bottom vessel. When its dissolved drain the jaggery in another bowl to get rid of the sediments at the bottom. Now allow it to boil and thicken to form the paagu.  To test this. Add a drop of the jaggery in a bowl of water. it should be a thick ball that sinks at the bottom of the vessel and not dissolve. Thats the consisteny we need to attain for Paagu.

Now add the paagu to the broken Thenkozhal.and mix until all of it is covered with the jaggery.When it is okie for you to touch, make it into small balls and store. If not just leave it at just the mix. Its yummy.

2 comments:

  1. Nice pics and good description of how to make paagu. But can you specify if it is "dang paagu", that is the vellam ball at the bottom of water makes a sound of dang when u hit it hard somewhere?

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  2. That is an indication too. When the jaggery ball hits the stainless steel vessel it makes the Dang sound. SO the Dang Paagu..
    Right Mayu? as u explained

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