Jangiri- A Taste Of Excitement

Lately, I miss my adventurous indulgences. Mostly deep fried snacks were store bought and had no attachment to our heart.  The ‘homemade’ pride  was missing apparently.

As diwali fell on a weekend this year and all the more as we did not have the time to make a trip to Devon markets,….I was browsing  for some daring (??) cooking idea on Friday night . My favourite sweet is Jangiri and had never seen a good one in the market so long.

Back home, whenever there is a marriage in our family,in our native village, we used hire cooks who used to bring in bada bada vessels and cook food for the crowd in the backyard.  Mostly the sweets used to be jangiri, badusha or Mysore pak.  The Jangiri when prepared so, at our backyard..my mom used to  feed me  the warm..’just out of stove’   jangiris…..Wow  they would be out of the world tasty.  I used to even complaint about my mom and grandma for making me  a sophisticated picky taster. The result  being  anything less than the perfect can never satisfy me.:)

All being said and thought upon, I wanted to dare  making jangiri with no further ado. I knew it would not be perfect and was not willing to buy out  the crunchy jilebi like jangiri in the market.  Googled for a few versions , and soaked the urad.  Here goes my next steps…..

1. 7.00 pm- Soaked  1 cup of Urad  (whole )

2. Googled further for detail videos and blogs.

3.9.15 pm- started grinding the dall after filtering out the water in it- Ran good for about 35- 40 min. sprinkled water in between when needed. The consistency was asked to be like medhu vada dough.

4. Measured out 1.5 cups of sugar to a thick pan and made a syrup by adding 3/4 cup of water. Switched off the stove when it reached about 1/2 string consistency.

5.10.00 pm –  Heated 1 inch of oil in a flat non stick pan .Mixed  the batter  with 1 tsp of rice flour and food color. Scooped this into a ziploc  and made a hole in it after sealing.

6. Practiced the pressing in a bowl of water a couple of times. The batter when in right consistency does float in water as ‘vada maavu’ and that can be added back to your stock.

7. Kept the flame medium  and pressed out the jangiris. The heat is a key factor . If the heat is high, you get crunchy jilebis, if too low , you end up wiht undercooked soggy jangiris.

8.  Soaked the jangiris in the sugar syrup and enjoy them as they are warm.

9. 11.00pm – Take a photo shoot  to show case my mom and bros  what I did finally for the Diwali:))

If it had been in India, we would have bought Ananda Bhavan Jangiris in no time and sat all day in television without a single thought of the effort that went into making  the sweet. But  today I realized the true joy of  being meditative in cooking and smile  when others enjoyed it.  A joy which my grandma  taught me throughout her living . Cook food , Serve love.

Tags: Jangirisweeturad

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