Chakka Varatti or Jackfruit Jam

Chakka Varatti or Jackfruit Jam

A seasonal trick to make good use of all the jackfruit that comes piling in during the summers—jackfruit jam. This version uses only three ingredients: jackfruit, jaggery, and flavoring. Cook it further and add ghee and toasted nuts, and it becomes a halva. But even without the ghee addition, it’s buttery and delectable and has a texture somewhere between the coconut-pandan kayas of Singaporean-Malay cookery and the famed dulce du leches of Argentine fame. It's perfect on toast with cream cheese, in alfajores, and of course tucked into ilaiappams and other leaf-wrapped desi cakes.

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Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

5 cups very ripe jack fruit
2 ½ cups jaggery or sugar, plus more to taste if needed
1 generous pinch each cardamom, black pepper, dry ginger and nutmeg powders

Method

Cook the jackfruit in a little water until it is very soft. Allow to cool and blend to a smooth paste.
Put jackfruit paste and jaggery syrup (or sugar) in a heavy-bottomed pan and cook on medium heat. Make sure you taste for sweetness at the outset and adjust by adding more sugar or jaggery syrup if the fruit wasn't sweet enough to complement the sweeteners.
Continue cooking and stirring constantly, until you reach a creamy-jammy consistency--about 20-30 minutes.
Switch off the heat, add the flavorings and mix well.
Bottle in clean, dry jars, cool and store, refrigerated.

Notes

This jam is a bare step away from being a halva—cook it just slightly more and add ghee in the penultimate stage, before the flavorings, and mix in a generous quotient of chopped nuts, et voila, it’s jackfruit halva for you. No difference at all.