KUMBALKAI PAYASA RECIPE

KUMBALKAI PAYASA

This is a recipe my mother uses.

I used the orange coloured pumpkins grown in Toronto for this dish.

Ingredients:

Pumpkin(half kg) jaggery (200gm), milk(quarter litre), peanuts(half cup), roasted split channa dal (hurigadale)(quarter cup),cardamom(seeds from 5), ghee or oil(a few spoons…enough to fry about 10 cashewnuts and 25 raisins), raisins and cashewnuts.

a.Remove the skin and seeds of the pumpkin. Cut the pumpkin into large or medium size pieces, place the pieces in a vessel with a little water and cook until soft. Alternately, the pumpkin can be cooked in a microwave oven or in a steam cooker. Mash the pumpkin pieces after cooking.

b. Roast the peanuts and grind it along with the hurigadle and cardamom in a mixer(or mortar and pestle!) and keep aside.

c.  Fry the raisins and cashewnuts in ghee or oil and place aside.

d.   Add milk, jaggery, the roasted and powdered peanuts and hurigadle, the fried raisins and cashewnuts into the vessel with mashed pumpkins and heat over low heat for ten minutes.

e.  The sweet dish is ready and can be eaten hot or cold.

Note: The quantities of the ingredients can be varied....you can

use more of less of any ingredient.

For example, I would not use water at all as the pumpkin is
already rich in moisture. I love to use  a lot more of the  peanuts and hurigadle than mentioned in the recipe as I love that rustic taste!

This dish  can be done in  half hour to forty minutes:

Skinning and dicing the pumpkins may take 10 minutes,

Frying the peanuts may take 10-12 minutes,

Cooking the pumpkin takes 10 minutes and

Putting all of the stuff on the stove while you fry the cashew and raisins on another stove and add it to the vessal can be done in 10 minutes.