Manni

Manni is a traditional, healthy dessert made with Ragi (finger millet), jaggery, and coconut milk. This pudding with its jelly-like consistency, is very easy to make and tastes great as a dessert, while retaining the healthy tag. Manni one of the important traditional sweet dishes of Tulunadu region.

Ingredients

1 cup ragi

1/2 cup jaggery crushed or powdered

1/2 cup grated coconut

2 cardamom

1 tablespoon finely chopped cashew nuts or pistachio (optional)

Method to prepare Manni

1. Clean and soak the ragi in water. Drain the water after 2 hours.
2. Powder or crush the jaggery. You could use more or less jaggery depending on your sweet preference.
3. Add 1 1/2 cups of water to the drained ragi and grind well in a blender. Strain this ragi milk through a sieve. Squeeze well to extract all the juices.
4. Add 1 cup of water to the grated coconut and grind well. Strain this also through a sieve and keep the coconut milk.
5. Ragi milk and coconut milk ready to cook.
6. Transfer the ragi extract, coconut milk, and jaggery to a pot.
7. Mix well, add cardamom and bring to boil on a medium flame while stirring frequently.
8. As soon as the liquid start boiling you can notice it starting to thickening.
9. Keep stirring so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.
10. Cook until you get it really thick, sticking to the sides of the pan and the spoon. It should still be viscous enough to pour.
11. Grease a tray or a flat plate with some ghee.
12. Pour it gently into the already greased tray. Flatten it using a spatula to distribute evenly across the tray.
13. Ragi manni is ready. Let it cool down. Cut into slices.
14. Dust with some crushed/finely chopped cashew nuts, or pistachios.

 Check out this video to make the cooking process easy.

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For more interesting local recipes of the region, you may check out this page.