The Big Sweet Tooth: Be My Guest - Chakka Payasam "Onam Special"

Wait a minute!!! Please don't gasp at your monitor sides and wipe your eyes! I know it's not Saturday nor did two weeks pass so quickly! Sometimes, you have to tweak your schedules a bit in order to accommodate some special posts. Today, Kerala celebrates Onam, which is the harvest festival. An occasion carried out with aplomb throughout the state. I am no person to really speak about it, because of me, Onam is all about sadya - a lunch served on a banana leaf with loads and loads of vegetables to eat. In fact, it's only during the time of sadya that I would eat rice without fish! Hehe... Since there are many more Malayalees who are more familiar with the celebrations and traditions, I would relieve myself from that duty and limit myself to wishing all the Keralites a very Happy Onam. :)

I know very much away from my schedule, I bring in another guest post and that too in the space of two days. Actually, this post happened all of a sudden. My schoolmate, Sujitha, whom we all call Suji lovingly, has a blog of her own. Sincerely speaking, I took encouragement for cooking from her. Her tried and tested pictures of FB really pushed me to try out recipes on my own, and that's when I started enjoying cooking. So you can say that my inherent interest was aroused because of her! She started the blog much before me, but because of certain consequences, she had to stall it and now she's again back to blogging with a bang. I've always seen that she cooks up a mini sadya every year at her residence in Bangalore. I just popped up the question if she is OK to do a post for me as Onam special and she did take it up on short notice, despite having a baby to take care of. Thank you so much Suji, for this... I know I have eaten your head but then... what are friends for? ;) So instead of me posting an Onam recipe, I give my friend the honors of doing it. Do go through, visit her blog and shower your love for her, just like all of you have done for me... :)

Hello everyone. I’m Sujitha Sasikumar, an amateur blogger and a mother of two wonderful kids. Cooking was really never a passion of mine as I felt it required a lot of time and effort. But post marriage I realized that cooking is really an essential part in maintaining a happy married life (and husband). So I started to get myself involved in it and now here I am with a little blog of my cooking experiments - Suji’s Cooking Lab. I’ve seen and been inspired by many food blogs and I’ve always wondered how they managed to create many wonderful dishes that required lots of hard work and time and energy. But as I am very lazy I usually end up doing easy dishes. So my blog consists of simple, easy to cook dishes and as mentioned in my blog its simply “easy cook for the lazy cooks”.

I’m very happy to present my first guest post for a very dear friend of mine, Rafeeda for her blog “The Big Sweet Tooth” and it makes me even more happier that I get to post on such a wonderful occasion like Onam. So here’s wishing all the readers and their families a very Happy Onam and presenting to you a very tasty sweet dish - Jackfruit Kheer / Chakka Paayasam. ENJOY !!!!

My mom makes one of the best Jackfruit kheers. She’s a huge fan of the fruit and so when it is in season she always make sure to prepare jam (Chakka Varatti) out of it by steaming the jackfruit pieces along with jaggery and ghee. This jam, if preserved carefully in the fridge can last for a year and won’t lose its taste. She prepares different tasty kheers with this jackfruit jam and I would like to share with you one of those.

Jackfruit Kheer/ Chakka Payasam
Recipe courtesy - my loving mom

Ingredients

1. Brown rice (unakkalari) - 1/2 cup ½

2. Melted jaggery (sharkkara) - 1 cup

3. Jackfruit jam (chakka varattiyathu) - 1 cup

4. Coconut milk - 1 cup

5. Ghee - 1 tbsp

6. Cardamom powder - 1/2 tsp

7. Dry ginger powder (chukku podi) - 1/2 tsp

8. Jeera powder - 1/2 tsp

9. Cashew nuts / Badam - for decoration

Method

Cook the rice in a pressure cooker with 1 cup water for 2 - 3 whistles in medium flame and keep aside. Heat a heavy bottomed pan (or uruli) and add ghee, jackfruit jam and the melted jaggery. Mix well and stir till it becomes a thin sauce. Add the cooked rice and stir again. If the kheer thickens add little water (boiled) and make it thin again. Simmer the heat and add the coconut milk. Keep on stirring so that the kheer would not curdle. Finally add the cardamom, dry ginger and jeera powders. When it starts boiling, switch off flame. Garnish with cashew nuts / badam.

Thank you so much Suji for giving this lip-smacking payasam, at such a short notice. I really feel like I've already savored a little of that payasam now. Hope all of you have enjoyed this post and wish you all your little festivities... :)