Skip to main content

Okkarai health bars

By


Okkarai: Funny name, Yummy treat..

I've no clue as to how this dish got its name & have always felt its a cross between a sweet sundal & a kozhakattai filling. but heck its delicious & that is what counts..

 Diwali is to Hindu's what Christmas is to Christianity. Its the festival of lights, a day signifying the triumph of good over evil,  a celebration of wealth & all the nice things in the world! Take your pick.. or not, you do not need a reason to celebrate.

 Growing up in India, you knew that Diwali was around the corner when shops began displaying fireworks prominently. It was time for women to get cracking on making treats that were part of their respective family traditions. Chivdas, Chaklis, Halwa, Burfee & amongst South Indians, the Diwali 'Lehiyam', a tonic meant to counteract any possible ill effects of overindulging on the other stuff.. (Nobody ever talks about the consequences of OD ing on Lehiyam, which happens all the time!)

Okkarai basically consists of exactly 2 primary ingredients, Channa (Chick pea) dal & Jaggery (gud), flavored with cardamom & ghee. The secret in its flavor is toasting the channa dal to bring out a nuttiness, that is the characteristic of this dessert. The original version is crumbly & is eaten with a spoon. A very healthy combination of proteins from the chickpea & carbs from the sugar (No comments on the quantity of ghee added which varies from household to household!)

Retaining the primary chewy nuttiness of the chickpea, Panfusines take on Okkarai incorporates toasted almonds, walnuts & pumpkin seeds to give it that extra dimension of a crunch. I omitted ghee for the most part confining its use to greasing the baking sheet. I refrain from calling this a granola bar since It does not include oats.

You need:

1 cup split chick pea lentil (chana dal)
1/2 cup almonds
1/2 cup Walnuts
1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
1 cup Jaggery
1/2- 1 cup brown or regular sugar (adjust this according to your personal preference, you may even use only Gud if you prefer.. It still behaves exactly like sugar does when cooked!).
seeds from 10-12 cardamom pods, crushed
Ghee/ butter for brushing.
Aluminum foil/parchment paper lined baking tray.

In a skillet toast the chana dal till golden brown. Pressure cook with minimal water till soft & separate but not mushy. Grind the  dal in a food processor to a coarse consistency, adding water as needed. (It should be a gritty mixture, NOT  a batter).


Place the almonds in a single layer on a baking sheet & toast till they become golden brown & start emitting an aroma.
Coarsely crush the nuts in a food processor into small pieces. Set aside.


Repeat with the walnuts & pumpkin seeds  , but instead of processing these, just break the toasted walnuts into little pieces by hand. Leave the toasted pumpkin seeds whole. Combine with the Cardamom.



In a heavy bottomed skillet combine the jaggery & sugar with very little water & heat to form a syrup. When the syrup reaches a 'soft crack' (the syrup forms thin malleable threads when dropped into cold water) stage, add the dal mixture and the nuts. Mix to combine all ingredients. At this stage the mix will seem a bit soft, even runny due to any residual water in the cooked dal.


Transfer the mixture to a greased & lined baking sheet & spread into an even layer.


Bake in a 250 F Oven for about 20-30 minutes till  sugar at the edges appears to caramelize. Switch off oven & let the mix rest inside for ~ 10 minutes.
At this point you could drizzle with melted chocolate for a delicious variation. Using a pizza cutter, cut  the okkarai sheet into bars.


Remove bars after its completely cooled & store in an airtight container.

(& thats my hand holding the bar before it went down my hatch!!)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to hear feedback from you, your thoughts, ideas and suggestions.

Popular posts from this blog

Unusual Ingredients - Unripe Blueberry Achar

By
T'was just another Summer afternoon, The kids were home for the summer holidays, getting bored, there's only so much summer reading you can force them to do, and the Indian mommy in me could no longer caution them against going out in the afternoon  (I've solemnly refused to use that horrid excuse of 'You'll get a dark tan if you stay out in the mid day sun'), and so we decided to head out to Terhune orchards for the blueberry picking. The kids never say no to outings to the orchard, they LOVE the trip there, the cute yellow dogs and the cats,  the chocolate crinkle and Snickerdoodle cookies, and they positively trip over grabbing buckets and heading joyfully towards the berry bushes... ... And there it ends, the younger one loses herself in her delightful imaginary worlds where she probably thinks she's hacking her way through virgin Amazon jungle, sighing at every branch that brushes against her legs, picks 2 or 3 berries as if they were a new as
6 comments
Read more

Sputtering back....

By
I seriously feel like this scene from the movie 3 idiots .. remember this one? The way I kept racking up drafts and eventually stopped doing that as well. Lulled into complacence by the quick high from Instagram posts. Recipe measurements hastily scribbled into a Moleskine notebook faithfully depending upon my moods. The truth is that I keep over thinking the backstories needed to make the post more interesting while in reality the truth is that ideas and inspirations just occur spontaneously (like little itches , sneezes or twitches) whenever the opportunity happens to strike. Some really cool ideas that scare the beejeezus out of me and yet prove to be utterly delightful and simple in the end. Others, that seem so trivial that I feel it wouldn't be worth crowing about -- even if there are enough other recipes in that genre that get so much publicity simply because the author happens to have the right marketing knack. So in the past 4 years that I've been
3 comments
Read more

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

By
 One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things  culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30  minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try any of their
14 comments
Read more