Made Cashew burfi for Deepavali sweet this year and it came out great!
Have been refining this recipe over the years with different results but we are locked into this final recipe.
Turns out the 4:3:2:1 ratio for select burfi's that my Lalli chitti taught me 20 years ago works for Cashew burfi as well!
We got a 100 pieces or so.
2. This process is very very labor intensive. There is a lot of stirring almost 40 minutes of stirring on low heat and the last 10 minutes is extremely challenging. The thing is so thick that stirring it is difficult, but stir you must or it will start browning.
3. It is more art than science when it comes to realizing "pour time". If you pour too early, it will be like a Halwa and will be a little gummy to eat. If you pour too late, the whole thing is hard and tastes like brittle candy or it has pieces of brittle hard stuff embedded in a matrix of the gummy stuff. That will taste good but kind of like having the almond noughats in chocholate texture.. The minute you start seeing the entire thing stick to your ladle and come off the pan as one blob, pour it! That is the secret.
The thing has to be just the right mix of crystallite stuff in an amorphous matrix..if you are a fab guy like me, think 550 C amorphous silicon!
Here is a video explaining how to make this delicious treat!
Think 4-3-2-1 and go easy on the milk and ghee.
Also made some thenkuzhal (did it with the right flour mix this time!) and San made some delicious Gulab Jamuns.
The litlte one doesn't like "nuts" except when converted to burfi's or Halwa's.
Next year we will do a Badam Halwa.
Hope you have fun making this sweet.
The traditional way of making Taro (சேப்பங்கிழங்கு) curry that my mother taught me is by staring to boil them whole.
We used a pressure cooker to boil the root (irrespective of how ugly and muddy it was) and then remove the skin after putting it in cold water (thermal shocking the skin!).
It would still not peel off easily like a potato and needed some delicate care during the peeling process. Otherwise most of the stuff would be thrown away with the skin. Also it was not a nice experience peeling the skin off pressure cooker boiled Taro as it was very slimy and slippery to touch. The curry was usually made with large pieces and the end product would roast on select areas but for the most part would be mushy.
Recently a us Taro, but potato curry style. It was crisp and not goopy! The secret? Peel it like a potato and almost fry it! Had to give this a try, but this method is very very labor intensive. It takes more time to get the thing cut than to actually make the curry.
The kids and San were out of the house for an hour and that gave me a chance to try this. Given I am still moping around with the antibioitics and no painkillers, this was a good idea to take my mind off things and do something I like!
Here is a valuable tip. Pick the Taro carefully at the Indian store. Pick well rounded large size Taro without too many cuts and crevices as it makes this approach easier. Pick ones with the highest volume for a lowest surface area.. ie., pick nice round ones!
The end result was yummy and crispy. Hope you have fun trying this at home.. when you have a lot of time on your hands!
ps. The same procedure pretty much applies to Okra curry (you don't have to put it in turmeric water after cutting).. and to Plantain curry (there you put the cut vegetable in water with some tamarind paste.. aka tartaric acid to prevent it from going black and sticking together).