Vanamala Thipaiah’s Recipe for Halasina Kadabu
A Malnad recipe from Chikmagalur, this is Vanamala’s labour of love, and the ultimate celebration of a south Indian summer. Vanamala Thipaiah, 82, lives with Pranoy at Kerehaklu, a biodiverse coffee estate focussed on in the Western Ghats.
To commemorate jackfruit season, jackfruit dumplings are sweetened with jaggery and fresh green cardamom, fattened in a batter of rice and coconut meat, are steamed for thirty minutes in banana leaves. Then toasted with ghee on a hot tawa, they are best paired with hot, south Indian filter coffee.
Recipe: Halasina (jackfruit) Kadabu
Ingredients
1/2 kg ripe jackfruit
1/4 kg steamed rice (any short-grained rice)
1/4 kg sugarcane jaggery
1 tsp ground green cardamom
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp ghee
1 cup grated dried coconut meat
Method
The steamed rice should be soaked in water for about two hours before the start of this process.
To check if a jackfruit is perfectly ripe before cutting it open, tap or ‘knock’ on it and you should hear a dull, hollow sound.
Choose large, yellow pods from the fruit, and tear the rind off them. Set aside the seeds and the thin layer of white skin that protects them. Weigh the torn pieces, and set aside about half a kilo for this recipe.
Gently grind the jaggery and fresh green cardamom in a mortar and pestle.
Place this along with the rice and fruit pods into a larger table-top mixer, with a tea spoon of salt and dried coconut meat. Grind to form a thick batter.
Wrap the batter in a banana leaf fashioned into a cylindrical shape* – resembling a loaf of bread. Place this in a steamer that has been oiled with ghee (to ensure the kadabus don’t stick to the steamer). Allow to steam for about 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, remove carefully, allow to cool, and cut slices with a long breadknife.
Toast each slice on a tawa with ghee, and serve with coffee.
*Instructions on prepping the banana leaf
Take a banana leaf (the kind used in a sadya).
Carefully tear half, and hold over a gentle flame. The leaf will soften, making the leaf pliable.
Now fold the leaf into a long cylinder. Fasten one end with a piece of string. From the open end, spoon in the jackfruit batter. Now close and tie with string.
Vanamala Thipaiah lives in Kerehaku Estate, Chikmagalur. She is 81 years old, and loves working with seasonal produce; is an expert on Malnad cuisine; and wakes up at 4 AM every morning to churn fresh butter from the cows in her dairy.
Photographs by Pratikha Mohanty.
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