Jack Fruit Halwa

My procrastination always ends me up in either sending last minute entries for the cooking events on blogosphere or totally skipping them, though I would have thought well before hand what I am going to do. This time it was different, when Bee and Jai announced Jack fruit as the ingredient for JIHVA. From the day, they announced their ingredient for Jihva to the moment when I added ingredients to the pot to come up with an entry, I was clueless.

Though we are fond of the fragrant, flavorful fruit, I had never seen my mom cooking with jack fruit, I had never eaten any jack fruit dish or never liked a fruit in savory dishes. My husband who had tasted raw jackfruit curry earlier was not interested in it either. A big thanks to Bee and Jai. Like that Poirot, after a long time, they put my grey cells to work.

Finally, I thought of experimenting for a sweet dish. I put all those ingredients that I thought would make the dish delicious, into a pot. Until the final stages, I was not sure what it is going to be. I thought if it reaches burfi stage, then I would call it burfi or else halwa. As you see, it became jack fruit halwa. By the way, it IS delicious (like any Indian sweet should be) with a hint of jackfruit flavor and I am going to make it more often.

Ingredients:

Jack fruit (sheaths around the seeds), chopped into pieces - 1/2 cup

Besan / Gram flour- 1/2 cup

Coconut, grated - 1 /2 cup

Milk - 1/2 cup

Sugar - 1 cup

Ghee - 4 or 5 Tbsp

Cardamom Powder, Powdered - 1/4 tsp

Raisins and Cashews - 2 Tbsp

Dry fry the besan on low flame in a nonstick pot, till you start to notice the aroma. It would take around a couple of minutes. Keep aside.

Grind the jack fruit pieces, coconut along with milk till all the jack fruit pieces are ground.

Add the ground mixture, sugar, 4 tbsp of ghee and cardamom powder to the besan and start to cook on low flame. Within a short time, you would notice all the mixture starting to turn into one big mass.

After the mixture starts to leave the sides of the pan and turns into a big mass, Keep stirring for about another 5 - 10 minutes and turn off the stove.
Heat a Tbsp of ghee in a small pan and add raisins and cashews to it. When cashews turn golden brown and raisins turn plump, turn off the stove. Add them to halwa and stir once.

Serve Warm or cold.

* I wanted to see if I could make burfis out of it and therefore kept stirring for another 20 minutes till my arms started aching. I am not sure whether that mixture could have reached burfi stage. So, anybody following this recipe could happily skip this part.

Jack Fruit Halwa ~ My entry for JFI - Jack fruit event hosted by Bee and Jai of Jugalbandi this month.

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