Jackfruit Sheera

A few years back, I went on a Matunga food trail organised by the now shut MumbaiBoss. Among the flurry of dosas and filter coffee we had that day, the standout dish for me was Jackfruit Sheera at Ramashraya. Sheera, for the uninitiated, is a thick porridge like dessert made with semolina. It's one of the easiest Indian desserts to make, and a classic comfort food. At Ramashraya, they excel in making different variations each day. Their most popular variety seems to be pineapple sheera but on the day we visited, they had a jackfruit sheera on offer.

Now jackfruit, specially the sweet, ripe, variety used in the sheera, can be quite an acquired taste. I only tasted it for the first time a few years back and it took me a while getting used to its rather overwhelming smell. I enjoy it now and with jackfruit now in season, I decided to try making the sheera at home.

The first step in making the sheera is, of course, getting jackfruit pieces. It's a difficult fruit to handle and cut through but thankfully, Mumbai vendors sell it to you nicely cut and cleaned. If you can't find jackfruit, just go without or replace with pineapple. The recipe still works.

Ingredients
1/2 cup semolina
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup jackfruit, finely chopped
2 cups water
4 tbsp ghee
5-6 saffron strands or 2-3 drops yellow food coloring
almonds or cashews to garnish, optional

Heat the water in a saucepan. Add the sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves. Boil for another 2-3 minutes to get your mixture all syrupy. At this point, add the saffron strands, turn off the heat and leave to infuse.

Pour the semolina in a dry nonstick pan and cook, stirring constantly, until it is lightly browned and toasty. Remove to a plate. Put the pan back on the heat and add ghee. Now the thing about ghee in sheera is, you can use a lot more than the 4 tbsp. Some people would even use the same quantity as the semolina, so a 1/2 cup in this case. I personally find the 4 tbsp quantity to be optimum.

Okay, back to heating the ghee now. Once it melts, add jackfruit pieces and stir on a medium heat for a couple of minutes until they are coated with ghee and heated through. Add the semolina, give a stir to mix and immediately pour in the sugar syrup. Make sure to add the syrup slowly, stirring as you go, to avoid lumps. Keep the heat low, and keep stirring until the sheera is thick like a porridge and you can't see individual grains of semolina. Garnish with almond or cashew slivers, if you like.

Comments

I've found my perfect cookie

It's a bite sized cookie, with flavors of a pie, shape of a croissant and a pretty, pretty name. It's Rugelach. I first heard of this cookie when it became the baking pick for Tuesdays with Dorrie a couple of months back. The looks, the concept - everything was fascinating. And I've dreamed of making this cookie ever since. I ditched hundreds of recipes floating around and went straight to the master. It's Dorie Greenspan's recipe that I used, and ain't I glad I got it so perfect the very first time. So what's rugelach? It's cream-cheese pastry dough, rolled then cut into wedges, spread with jam and sugar and fillings of choice, rolled into crescents and baked. First the dough. Dorie did it in her processor, but I just went and did it by hand. Put 100 gms cream cheese and 100 gms butter out of the fridge until they were soft but still cold. Added both to a cup of plain flour (I omitted the salt because I use salted butter). Rubbed the flour and but

Aloo Paranthas

In all these years of blogging, I've somehow never managed to talk about aloo paranthas, the potato stuffed flatbread that's a standard breakfast in North India. Possibly because they are such a staple in our home, I found there wouldn't be enough interest in the recipe. But I've also realised over time that my mom's recipe is unique, using a combination of flavours and spices that make these paranthas delicious. But that's not the only reason for this post. I also wanted to tell you about a super cool party and some ways we found to make aloo paranthas even better and believe it or not, healthier. The party in question was hosted by Rushina at her cooking studio a few months back. For a while now, Rushina has been talking about the merits of cling film, parchment and something called cooking foil made by Asahi Kasei. Because we won't believe that you can really cook without oil but using science, she invited a bunch of us over for a potluck lunch.

Mystery Fruit

This only happened a few times every year, just when the rainy season kicked in. A street hawker will come by, straw basket on head. He will yell "kaul chapni" and I will run out to buy a bundle of these. Stuck together like flowers, they looked like a bouquet. Every hole contains a little fruit. You break out the package, peel the tiny fruit that pops out and eat it. Done slowly, it can take you an hour to eat an head. Or did, when I was about 12 years old. That was the last time I saw this fruit. I've never seen it again, didn't even know what it was called or where it came from. Three weeks back, Vikram Doctor wrote about a store in Khar that sells Sindhi foods. He described this fruit and I knew it came from my vivid childhood memories. And finally, I knew we were talking about lotus fruit. Now talk about coincidences. Last weekend, I was passing by a lane in Bandra and for the first time in many, many years I saw the straw basket filled with my mytery fru

Bombay Foodie

Search This Blog