Ada Pradhaman

DESSERTS

Ada pradhaman

My mom’s unique dessert for festivals and functions, she prepares with traditional formats. Steps for extracting coconut milk, jaggery paste are almost same for all varieties of pradhamans. I do follow the same procedures of my mom.

Ada – 100 gm, Broken into small pieces

Jaggery – 500 gm

Coconut milk – Milk from 2, medium sized coconuts

Sago/javvarisi – a hand full

Coconut bits sliced – 1 tbsp

Cashew nuts – 10

Raisins – 10

Cardamom – 10, medium sized

Ghee- 3- 5 tbsp

Method:

Coconut milk: add 1 cup of water to the finely peeled coconut. Use your hands to press well on the peel to squeeze thick milk from it. Sieve and keep it aside as 1^st milk (1 cup). Now grind it well in a mixer sieve and keep it aside as 2^nd milk (2- 4 large cups).

Jaggery paste: break jaggery balls into small pieces and boil it with a ½ cup of water in a pan for few mins. Check any lumps left without melting with a spoon. Lower the flame and keep it aside. This helps to remove the dust particles and sand from the jaggery.

For tempering: heat ghee in a pan. add cashew nuts, coconut bits, cardamom powder and then raisins.

Get ready for the cooking:

Bring water to boiling, lower the flame and add the ada. Switch off once the ada gets half cooked. Drain the water completely and rinse the ada 1-2 times in cold water. This helps to prevent the ada from sticking to each other.

Heat a thick bottomed vessel/ uruli with 2 tbsps of ghee and fry the cooked ada for 5 minutes. Now add jaggery paste, sago/javvarisi to the ada and cook in medium flame until it thickens. Once it thickens, add the 2^nd coconut milk. Cook on medium flame until it thickens again. Once it thickens, lower the flame or else ada can get easily stick to the bottom of the vessel.

Once it thickens, add the fried items, 1^st milk and mix well. switch off the flame. Do not cook after adding the 1^st milk.

Serve hot with banana or papodam

Tip: once it cools, it will thicken so add enough coconut milk as mentioned.