Hello friends! As you all know a cute and very interesting challenge is hosted by our friend Divya Pramil from You too can cook. Challenge is the teams are divided on India's geographical location and put in North and South zone accordingly. One member of North team challenges the South team to try out the dish and same South team challenges North team. Its a monthly event and last month October challenge for North team was to make Mysore pak and for South team to make bhelpoori. Needless to say it was fun and enjoyable learning experience.
This month challenge from South is from Yashodha and its Adirasam. Its a traditional South Indian sweet comprising of Rice flour, jaggery and water and deep fried. Since I am from North team I have to prepare Adirasam and when I saw the recipe at yashoda's place I was foxed. I am bit confused when it comes to making any sweet which requires sugar or jaggery consistency and my first impression told me its hard dish to make. Not the one to give up I bugged every member of South team and they were so sweet in explaining me how to do it that I started getting clear picture in my head.
I did not even spare my maid who is a Tamilian and who had amusing expression on her face when I showed her what I want to make. She also told me what I should do and well here it is. It may not be perfect but I did make it and sorry for mistakes. Looks like I made a lengthy convo here. Ha ha
Ingredients :
500gms rice
250 gms jaggery
4 tbsp water.
a pinch of cardamom powder
Milk and ghee optional
oil to deep fry.
Method:
Since I have never tasted adirasam I decided to go with lesser quantity than what yashodha in her recipe wrote but I think measurements may vary for rice and jaggery.
Soak rice for 1 or 2 hours and then drain completely. Here I spread the rice on newspaper to just dry a bit more but it should remain slightly moist. Grind the rice into a powder which is slightly more than rawa consistency. Thats how I understood it to be though I did goof up a bit there. It should not be very fine nor very coarse. Make sure rice particles are not there. Keep it aside.
Add jaggery and water in a heavy bottom vessel and let it boil till all jaggery melts. Add cardamom powder here or grind whole cardamom along with rice. Jaggery syrup should be thicker of one string consistency. How to check the consistency,please refer to yashodha's post on same.
Remove syrup from gas and after few minutes using wooden spatula slowly add rice flour and mix continously. Mix till you get smooth dough. You may not need all the flour but keep extra just in case. Again consistency should be of chapati dough.
Keep the dough covered for a day and next day on a plastic sheet rub slight ghee and put lemon sized ball of the dough. With fingers slightly press and form a thick circle. Don't make it too thin and then fry cute little adirasams in oil. Fry on low to medium heat till both sides are done and remove on kitchen paper to drain out excess oil.
So there I am done with it and by the way adirasams are very tasty and the look on my maid's face was worth watching as she was amused by my attempts to make this delightful dish. She was my tester for this as I have never tasted so did not know how it would be.
Hope I did as per my South team members expectations and over to you for lovely comments.
