Free Imagine Things

We Iyengars celebrate Krishnajayanthi, and it is a very big festival in our community, It is absolutely a pain for the elders but it is a joy to the children, I do remember when mom & dad used to take 2 days leave before krishnajayanthi and with my perimma, all the three used to do around 25 to 30 kind of sweets & savouries right from scratch, like making the rice flour at home, perimma was a home maker so she used to start with it, all the three used to get early in the morning take head bath and pray to God! just only live with drinking cups of coffees, send us off to school and till afternoon make all the bakshanams in big vangala patrams and kept in a separate room where nobody was allowed to touch anything, 3 days they used toil so hard, they used to make maav (flour) for each of the bakshanams on their own never mill them, they used to in turns powder in the big mortars which we find in Indian homes which is fixed to the floor, with a big Onake (that is what we call in kannada ), it was quite a hard work, we lived in a house where it was like a box nobody would know that their is a house when you enter it, it was so cosy when passing the passage way to our right we had this mortar fixed to the ground we lived upstairs , these 3 used to take everything downstairs and start making all the powders and I used to sit on the staircase and watch them.., Oh! now I feel those days were so beautiful what a wonderful time we had, we can't get back all those back can we ?, well, I have come a long way now !!, Ok, let's come back to my Bakshanams:

• 1 cup Grated coconut (press it into the cup to full)
• 2 cups Sugar
• 1/2 tsp Cardamom
• 2 tbsp Ghee
• 1/4 milk

1. Grind coconut for a minute in a mixie
2. Then add sugar into it and sprinkle milk , mix them all together and leave it for an hour
3. Heat this mixture in a wok, in a low flame stirring continuously, until it does not stick to the bottom of the wok.
4. Add Ghee and cardamom powder and stir.
5. when the mixture swells up (looks like bubbles forming),
6. Remove from fire and pour into a greased plate, Your can grease a plate with little ghee before you start off with the procedure.
7. Then flatten the mixture evenly and leave it for some time, say about an hour or so, by then it wouldn't have completely settled.
8. Take a knife smear it with ghee and cut them into desired shape, and allow it further to set properly, when once it is properly set you can cut the coconut Burphis easily and serve them.

• 1 cup Bengal Gram Flour (chickpea flour)
• 1 cup coconut
• 1 cup Ghee
• 1 cup milk
• 3 cups sugar
• a pinch of cardamom powder

1. Take a wok, in a low flame fry the bengal gram flour until it is just warm, then take it out and keep it aside .
2. In the same wok pour the cup of milk once it starts boiling add all the sugar and stir continuously until the sugar completely dissolves
3. Next add coconut and mix well, then add cardamom powder.
4. Next add the slightly roasted bengal gram flour little by little so that no lumps are formed.
5. Completely mix the flour into it with no lumps in it, and keep on stirring continuously then add the Ghee, little by little , but Don't stop stirring.
6. Keep a greased plate ready.
7. When you keep on stirring, you will start seeing that the mixture stops sticking to the wok and starts frothing up like bubbling up now it is the right time that you pour this on to the greased plate.
8. Shake the plate gently so that the seven cups burphi spreads evenly.
9. when it is half cooled, cut it with greased knife into required size and shape.

VELLA SEEDAI

This & uppu seedai I learnt when I got married from my Mother-in-law, I feel this is one of challenge to do, I have messed it up twice and needs to be monitored very carefully, If you are careful you will see that they get dissolved in the oil!!

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup Raw rice flour
• 2 tsp Black gram flour (fry blackgram dhal without oil & powder)
• 1 tbsp coconut
• 3/4th cup Jaggery (grated)
• 1/4tsp Sesame seeds
• 1/4 tsp powdered cardamom

METHOD

1. Fry rice flour slightly without oil.
2. Fry Seasame seeds
3. Cut coconut into small bits and fry in a little ghee
4. Add a little water to jaggery and keep on a low fire.
5. when jaggery dissolves well, remove from fire.
6. Add sesame seeds, coconut, powdered cardamom to the jaggery syrup and then rice flour and make a firm dough.
7. Roll into small balls of marble size.
8. Heat oil in a frying pan and fry these vella seedai to golden brown.
9. The seedai's will be usually hard to bite, but is good to taste.