UNDA SARKARA/ MANDAVELLAM The jagerry obtained from sugarcane is called sarkara inMalayalam and vellam in Tamil. During my boyhood days we used to get 50% liquidPATHIYAN SARKARAbrown in colour. This came in tins. From the provision stores it was obtainedin jars and called sarkarabharani.
There is a saying on account of that there would be no person who wouldnot suck his hand after taking jagerry from the jar. Those days havegone. Now a day we get everywhere the unda sarkara or mandavellam slightlyheating it is liquefied and become sticky. It is yellowish brown in colour. Achhu vellam was/is characterised by its sweet salty natureand it was purchased as last resort. Rarely we get this achhuvellam now too inprovision stores. It comes as some sort of blocks of approximate size 1”x1”1”.It is more sweet salty. This mandavellam is used in the ground nut candy and with slight modification inthe ginger toffee. What made me to write about unda sarkara today is seeing anew form of ground nut candy- like chocolate, the groundnut is 90% ground andsarkara added during mixing. The attractive feature is this chocolate candy isnot sticky like the ordinary ground nut candy. However I felt it is less sweet and probably would haveprepared for diabetics. On those days the unda used to be the size of a bigcoconut. Now the size is reduced to about the size of a pomegranate. Thereduction in size is felt well by household women. Just keeping it on newspaperand hitting with a small hammer, it would break to two or three and then it canbe broken to smaller pieces. After making to pieces or powder even by keepingin room temperature it becomes sticky. The small children may be interested to eat; a small pieceto the size of toffee would be good for biting and consuming. It can be assmall pieces a side item with ada dosa and uppuma also. Depend on our luck the unda sarkara of today may be sweetor slightly salty while we get from the store. If we smash the unda sarkara with palm we may see whitishpowder similar to sugar in that area. Along with ayurvedic medicines which are bitter or sour, inthe end the ayurvedic doctors used to permit a small quantity of sarkara bit. One thing I have observed. If jiggery is more added thanwhat is required, salttaste is felt. Many of oursweets like appam, elluruda, modakam, sweet preparation like adaprathaman,kattipayasam, are all prepared with sarkara. I have heard a special type of jagerry is used forAmbalappuzha palpayasam. I am not sure of the details. Plain coffee is sometimes added with jagerry. Chukku coffeeis prepared adding jagerry or KARUPPETTI, a distant cousin of undasarkara. It is prepared fromjagerry obtained from PALMIRA TREE. Karupetti is made using coconut shells,pouring the jagerry in to it and moulding. At one time it was karupetti coffee (coffee made withordinary coffee powder, and adding karuppetti) common in many of our homes. I recollectroyal members not feeling well sometimes asking my father to get karuppetticoffee while coming to house with chukku, since they always used to preparemilk coffee. Unda sarkara so farI have seen is hand made.What make me confuse is instead of calling as UNDAVELLAM calling it as mandavellam in Tamil. Writer- R. GopalaKrishnan dated 5-4-2014. Reposted on 1-2-2021 after editing. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/1082945635.651600.1612140441251%40mail.yahoo.com.
