Jackfruit Delicacy - Chakka Ada: How to Make

Evening snacks are always a problem in the households of India, especially in the southern part. Many traditional snacks can be made at home. Something with jackfruit is really delicious. Jackfruit is easily available all over the world. Jackfruits can be used mainly as fruits. Here, we are going to learn some tasty recipe with ripe jackfruits. The fruits can be eaten as they are once they are ripe. If you want to use it as a snack and preserve it for a week, how to do it.

Items required

Jackfruit jam (chakka varatty) - 1 1/2 cups (Please see below how to make jackfruit jam)

Rice flour - 1 cup

(raw rice soaked and dried, and then powdered into rawa size flour)

Cardamom powder - 1 tsp

Salt - a pinch

Coconut scrappings - 1 cup

Jaggery scrappings - 1/2 cup

Edna leaves or banana leaves - As per the number required

1. Roast the rice flour in a thick bottomed pan, until you get the aroma of the roasted flour.

2. In another bowl, keep the jackfruit jam (chakka varatti). Add grated jaggery and mix well with a spoon.

3. Add grated coconut, cardamom powder and salt. Mix well.

4. Add the roasted rice flour to the mixture and mix well. If necessary, add 1-2 spoon water to get the consistency. Make round balls (lemon size) with this mixture.

5. Take the edna leaves or banana leaves and clean them well with a towel.

6. Spread the mixture balls evenly on the leaves with your fingers, and fold them into half.

7. Keep a steamer (Like idli maker) with one cup of water, on the stove.

8. Keep all the folded leaves (adas) carefully in the top vessel and cover the vessel.

9. Steam it for about 10-15 minutes, and then switch off the stove.

10. Remove the lid after 10 minutes, and take out the folded leaves one by one. Your yummy adas are ready to use now.

You can use these adas immediately. But if you have made more and store them for another day, it is also okay. The adas should not be removed from the leaves until your use. With the leaves they will stay for a week, if kept in fridge. In fact, they will taste better after a day or two with the aroma of the steamed leaves.

You must have a good variety of big ripe jackfruit. Cut it and take out the fruits from it, and then remove the covering white fibers and the seeds from inside. Now it is ready to use as fruits. Take one kilo of jackfruit and cut them into small round pieces, and then boil it well in 1 1/2 cups of water. Add almost a kilo of jaggery and cook well, keep stirring so that it won't get burnt. When the jaggery is mixed with the fruits, add 100 grams of ghee to it and keep stirring continuously in a slow fire, till it becomes brown in colour and the ghee is separated from the halwa (jam). You can use whatever quantity you want once and can be kept for further use. It won't get spoiled. (For immediate use, you need not keep it on the fire for a long time.)

Ripe Fruits - With this jackfruit halwa/jam, also called as chakka varatti in local language, can be used for making some other tasty dishes also, like jackfruit payasam (another yummy sweet dish), jackfruit appam (chakka appam) by deep frying, which is another mouth watering dish.

Mature jackfruits (not ripe) - These can be used for making two types of jackfruit chips. In one type, just thinnly cut mature jackfruits are fried (deep fry) to prepare jackfruit chips. In another type, these thinnly cut jackfruits are steamed for two minutes with a bit of salt and dried in the sun. These can be stored for a long time and can be fried and used as per your requirement.

Tender jackfruits - These baby jackfruits ( a month old) can be cut and removed the upper rough portion. The inner part can be steamed and cut into small pieces and then made into a side dish called chakka thoran with coconuts and onion, preferably small onions, and green chillies. The steamed tender fruits can also be used to make vada for evening snacks.