Being a native of tirunelveli , i had an eye on this halwa for a long time . For this diwali i thought, i should make something that i never tried so far. At last my search ended up with this halwa. I referred this video ( 3 PARTS ARE THERE) & this blog for the recipe. I too made some changes.It was a huge success at home. Halwa looked glossy and tasted as we get in “Iruttukadai “. Of course, its very difficult to reproduce the same at home because Nellai people used to say, the taste of halwa is due to the use of thamirabarani river water and the original recipe is kept secret :). But I followed the video and tried to bring its taste close to the original halwa. I am happy with this recipe. Though its a time consuming process , its worth the effort..Please go through the Notes section for some tips..
INGREDIENTS
1 cup – 200ml
- Whole Wheat / Samba godhumai – 1 cup
- Sugar – 2.5 – 3 cups
- Ghee – 2 cups
- Roasted cashews – 15 nos ( break into two halves)
- Water – 6 cups + extra for grinding the soaked whole wheat.
- Food color – few drops ( optional)
METHOD
- Soak the whole wheat berries over nite or for 8 hrs.
- Drain the water and grind to make a smooth paste by adding water. It took half an hour to grind completely.( i used grinder) No matter how much water u add here for grinding.
- Remove and take the extract by filtering it twice or thrice.U’ll get a white milk .
- Take the milk in a wide bowl , close and allow it to ferment for 10hrs.
- The next day u’ll c a layer of water getting separated. Without disturbing the sediment , just drain the water in the top.
- U’ll get a thick milk around 1.5 cups.
- Now add 6 cups of water as i mentioned in the ingredients and mix well.
- Add the sugar and take the mixture in a deep , wide bowl.
- Stir the sugar till it dissolves in the wheat milk mixed with water and allow it to boil.
- It takes nearly 50 mins – 1hr to get cooked. keep in a medium flame and make sure it don’t get burnt.Stir for every 3 mins. U can cover & cook .
- At one stage u’ll find the halwa starts to leave the sides , turns glossy and non sticky.
- Now add the roasted cashews.By the time the halwa gets cooked , the color will be changed automatically. If needed, add few drops of food color too.
- Add ghee little by little say 2 tbsp . As soon as u add the ghee, u’ll find it easy to stir but after some minutes halwa absorbs all the ghee and solidifies making it difficult to stir.
- Again add little ghee.Continue the same process . At one stage , the halwa starts to ooze out the ghee it took. At this time stop adding ghee and remove the ghee ( it oozes out ) in a separate bowl. Mix well and collect all the ghee.The halwa starts to rotate holding the ladle. This is the final step.Switch off the stove and allow the halwa to be in the same bowl. This helps thickening of halwa .
- Transfer it to an air tight container after it cools down. Reheat the halwa in MW and njoy if u wanna eat it hot 🙂
Delicious tirunelveli halwa is ready to enjoy !!
NOTES
- Here i’ve combined the method i saw in the video & blog. Actually the procedure is to make a sugar syrup of one thread consistency before adding the wheat milk.This helps to quicken the process of cooking.But i followed what’s mentioned in that video.
- In that video , he has mentioned to add the ghee and remove immediately. But the thing is u’ve to add all the ghee little by little and stir till the ghee comes out back.This is the correct procedure i feel.Its missed in the video.Also the sugar quantity he said is more.Please add the amount i’ve given here.Sweet lovers , add little more.
- Instead of adding 2 cups of ghee , u can replace half of the ghee by dalda/vanaspathi. ( but its better to add ghee in health point of view )
- U can use the collected ghee for making other sweets or in ur daily cooking.No need to waste it.
- The point is the halwa should slide down when u take in a spoon . please take care not to over cook it.
- For this measurement , u’ll get nearly 3/4 kg of halwa.
- Total preparation time for this halwa would be around 1 hr 15 mins.
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