Guava Cheese Please!

This post is from much earlier this year, when it was just past Christmas 2019–but I’m unapologetically slow, and for once that pays off because it’s about to be Christmas 2020, and this recipe is a very Goan Christmas thing.

Peraad or perad is a classic Goan guava “toffee”– also known as a guava cheese, though it’s even less cheese than toffee except in texture and coloration. Outside of the subcontinent, its known predictably as “Indian” guava cheese.

I remember sucking on these and relishing their tart-sweet-leathery texture greatly as a child, though I’ve no recollection of precisely who made them or gave them to me. My husband, on the other hand, tells of how his mother would go to local canning centers where, for a nominal fee, one could learn about and make simple confections and jams with the use of the center’s cooking gas (home cooking gas was not as readily available then as now), pans, utensils and more. It was the old home-industry based thinking, drawn in no small measure from Soviet models, which allowed housewives to become small self-sufficient producers if they so wished. And after hours of slaving away at the canning center, a precious stash of jams and guava cheese would fill up the household’s meat lockers (yeah, even vegetarian households had those though we may not have called them that) … until the children found them during parents’ naps, that is.

Ah, the little joys of thieving that ripe fruit from a neighbor’s yard, raiding that nellikaya grove or that meat locker, and thrilling at the accomplishment of it all. The best childhoods are made of such minor transgressions, so go now and stock your lockers with peraada. So your children can find them and you can feign annoyance but grin secretly, and happy memories of chap-chap-ing on guava toffees can be made all over again.

The first time around, I made guava cheese from pink guavas, pureeing and straining the raw pulp. The color you see is completely natural. The next time, I used slightly more raw green guavas, so I had to cook them first before blending, straining, and candying. You can go either way, depending on the ripeness of your fruit.

When I saw the result—sucker for punishment that I am, I had to get more pink guavas for another batch and layer the two… producing what you see before you now.

These are really fun things to have around. They’re a perfect (and perfectly small) after-meal sweet, they’re great with crackers, they’re both fancy and utterly simple. The cheese moniker made me think also that, more than resembling a cheese, this would complement a cheese board brilliantly.

Two versions of the recipe here. One is written, the other is derived from my Instagram stories which I turned into a wee video–in this, you can see and follow the whole process.

Use the one which pleases you, but do please make these pronto! Say cheese!

Guava Cheese

This isn't a cheese but a delicious little candy made from cooking down pureed guavas. It goes by many names: perad, perada, guava toffee, guava cheese and Indian guava cheese. Whatever you choose to call it, it's a classic, easy, tart-sweet-yummy Goan Christmas treat.

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Ingredients Method

Ingredients

  

• 4-5 ripe guavas
• The equivalent weight in white sugar
• 2 tablespoons cubed butter
• 1 large lemon

Method

 

1. NOTE: If you are making the layered peraada, then you’ll need to double this recipe and get 4-5 ripe guavas of each color. Work with one color set at a time, and make 2 batches of this recipe.
2. Prepare a rimmed baking sheet by lining with parchment; lightly grease the parchment with a little butter. Don’t use oil, or you’ll risk ruining the flavor of the guava toffee that will come to rest on top of this!
3. Puree the guavas whole, without adding any water.
4. If the guavas are slightly unripe, you can cook them briefly just enough to soften them, and then drain and puree.
5. Push the guava puree through a strainer to separate the seeds. This will take some mixing and coaxing, but eventually you obtain a seedless puree
6. Weigh the resulting pulp. This is important because it determines the amount of sugar you’ll need (and how much you can reduce, if you want to).
7. Now dump the entire pure, sugar, and the juice of 1 large lemon into a heavy bottomed pan.
8. Using a low-medium flame, start mixing. Do not leave this unattended or stop mixing as the puree thickens quickly, and will catch and burn below if left without stirring—and a charred flavor is not what we’re aiming for.
9. Soon the liquid will come to a mud-pot volcanic boil—continue mixing and cooking.
10. Shortly after the mid-pot boil stage, add in the butter cubes
11. When you’ve been cooking & mixing for about 30 minutes or so, the mixture should start to pull away from the sides of the pan. Test now by putting a little onto a spoon, stick it in a freezer to cool rapidly and see if you can roll a little ball with greased fingers. If you can, switch off the flame—you’re done. (If not, continue cooking until you come to this “ball” stage).
12. Now working quickly, spread this paste into an even layer on the prepped parchment-lined baking sheet
13. Let this rest for a few hours before cutting. Or, if you are making layered peraada as in my images, set this aside to rest while you prep the second color/layer.
14. Put the second layer on top of the first only after it has cooled thoroughly. Leave the second layer to cool completely before cutting into shapes and patterns of your choosing.