Its pumpkin season and there is plenty of western dishes out here to make the harvesting season mouthwatering with pumpkin recipes. But here I share a recipe with pumpkin to blend the traditional Malayalee desert dish taste. The dish came out pretty tasty and is even hard to find out the leading ingredient – which is good as most in my family don’t like the flavor of pumpkin itself.
Ingredients
- Mathanga/ Pumpkin : ¾ kg
- Jaggery : ½ kg (adjust)
- Ghee : ¼ cup (adjust)
- Coconut milk : 400 ml (1 Tin)
- Cashews , raisins
- Ginger powder (Chukku podi) : A big pinch
- Jeera powder : A big pinch
- Cardamom powder : ¼ T- sp
- Tapioca pearls (sabudana) : 4 Tbl-sp
Method
- Peel the skin of the pumpkin and cut to medium size pieces.
- In a pressure cooker add the pumpkin and 1 cup of water and cook it for 4-5 whistles or until soft.
- Smash it well and keep it aside.
- Soak the sabudana for about 20 minutes and cook it until soft
- In a pan add jaggery and 1.5 cup of water and boil it until jaggery is melted completely . Filter it for removing the residue.
- Open the coconut milk can (don’t shake it) and take the top part of milk ie, 1cup of thick milk .
- Dilute the rest of milk (total I prepared 5 cup of thin milk).
- Take a table spoon of thick milk and keep it for later use.
- In a thick bottom Kadai / pan add the jaggery syrup and allow it to boil.
- Then add the smashed pumpkin and mix it, add 1 Tbl sp of ghee in-between and stir it well.
- Keep stirring the mix for about 30-40 min until the mixture thicken and the color of the mix pumpkin is like jaggery syrup.
- Pour the 5 cups of thin milk and cooked sabudana and let it boil well, can see the quantity get reduced a little and then add the first (thick) milk. Allow it to heat about 2 minutes ( do not boil).
- Dilute the jeera powder , cardamom powder and chukku podi into the 1 tbl-sp of coconut milk and add the same it to the Payasam and mix it well.
- In a pan add the rest of ghee and fry the cashews and raisins and add it to the Payasam and mix it.
