Halasina Hannu Berati Payasa / Preserved jack fruit payasam

First I want to wish a very very happy “Krishna Janmashtami” to all my readers. On the eve of this festival I made this payasam and enjoyed with my family.

“Berati” is nothing but preserved jackfruit pulp, which is cooked until it forms into thick mass and usually made during Jack fruit season and stored for future use.

In Coastal region we love jack in many forms. This is one of them.

Now we will see traditionally how it is made:

Ingredients:

Berati / jackfruit preserve – 1 bowl

Coconut – 1 (To extract milk)

-OR-

Thin coconut milk – 2cups

Thick coconut milk – ½ cup

Jaggery – to taste

Salt – ½ tsp

Cardamom powder – ½ tsp

For Seasoning:

Ghee – 1 tbl sp

Thin Coconut slices – 2 tbl sp

Cashew pieces – 1 tbl sp

Method:

• Take out Berati from your freezer and keep aside for some time to attain room temperature.
• Grate coconut (coconut should be fresh), put one cup of water and grind this in a mixer jar and extract milk by sieving this ground mixture. This is thick coconut milk and you should keep this separately. We use this at the end stage of Payasa making.
• Do this procedure a couple of times to get a thin extract and lastly discard coconut fibre.
• If you are using readymade coconut milk, please skip this step.
• Now take one thick bottomed vessel, put Berati, thin coconut milk and dissolve Berati and keep this on a gas stove to boil.
• Usually while making Berati, we put little jaggery, so add required amount of jaggery and boil until raw smell of the jaggery vanishes.
• Lastly add thick extract of coconut milk and give one boil. Don’t boil it much. Add Cardamom powder and mix.

• Remove from fire and add the seasoning by heating ghee and fry coconut pieces until golden brown. Put cashew brittles and fry. Add this to prepared Payasa.