UNDA SARKARA/ MANDAVELLAM The jaggery obtained from sugarcane is called sarkara inMalayalam and vellam in Tamil. During my boyhood days we used to get 50% liquidjaggery called PATHIYANSARKARA brown in colour. This came in tins. From the provisionstores it was obtained in jars and called sarkara bharani.
There is a saying on account of that- Sarkara bharaniyilkai ittal nakkathavarundo? (There would be no person who would not lick hishand after taking jaggery from the jar). Those days have gone. Nowadays we get everywhere theunda sarkara or mandavellam. By slightly heating it would be liquefied andbecome sticky. It is yellowish brown in colour. Achhu vellam was/is characterised by its sweetsalty nature and it was purchased as last resort. Rarely we get thisachhuvellam now too in provision stores. It comes as some sort of blocks ofapproximate size 1”x1”x1”. It is sweet salty. I tried best forgoogle search to get a reason- I could not. Learned members can write AchuVellam which is commonly known as cube jaggery is ofindividual cube pieces pressed in a specially designed achu. Vellam is madefrom sugarcane by crushing and boiling the sugarcane juice at very hightemperature and the sedimented sugar is pressed to obtain a cubical shapedjaggery. This manda vellam is used in the ground nut candy and withslight modification in the ginger toffee (Inchimarappa). I keep inchi marappa always athome. It could serve 30% effect of fresh ginger. 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 sweetand probably would haveprepared for diabetics. On those days the undasarkara appeared like a big coconut. Now the size is reduced to about the size of apomegranate. The reduction in size is felt well by household women. Just keepingit on newspaper and hitting with a small hammer/ granite round piece(Kuzhavi),it would break to two or three large pieces and then it can be broken tosmaller pieces. After making to pieces or powder even by keeping in room temperature it becomessticky. The small children may be interested to eat it; a smallpiece to the size of toffee would be good for biting and consuming. As smallpieces it is used as a side item with ATA 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 sarkarawith palm we might see whitishpowder similar to sugar in that area. Along with Ayurvedic medicines which are BITTER (kaippu), in the endthe Ayurvedic doctors used to permit a small quantity of sarkara bit. One thing I have observed. If sarkara is more, salt taste is felt in the preparation. Many of our sweets like appam, elluruda,modakam, sweet preparation like adaprathaman, kattipayasam, are all preparedwith sarkara. I have heard a special type of jaggery is used forAmbalappuzha palpayasam. Probably kept as secrecy. Plain coffee is sometimes added with jaggery. Chukku coffeeis prepared adding jaggery or KARUPPETTI, a distant cousin of undasarkara. Itis prepared from jaggery obtained from PALMIRA TREE. Karupetti is moulded usingcoconut shells, pouring the Palmira jaggery 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 recollect royal membersclose to my father, not feeling well sometimes asking my father to get karuppetti coffee with chukku(dried ginger), since they always prepared milk coffee (coming to home). Some royal members whowere in the habit of using snuff used to come to my home. If they search my father, I would understand thepurpose and give snuff tin to them. After using snuff they would go with asmile . It was the habit of royal members not keeping such itemsin Palace. Unda sarkara so far I have seen hand made. What make meconfuse is instead of calling as UNDAVELLAM calling it as MANDAVELLAM in Tamil. Probably in earlier days it was made to the size of a smallhead? Writer- R. GopalaKrishnan dated 5-4-2014. Reposted after editing on 24-5-2021. R. GopalaKrishnan -- 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/1693139294.2765964.1621867722579%40mail.yahoo.com.
