Healthy? Easy? Delicious? We’ve got all kinds of modak recipes for the ultimate Ganesh Chaturthi festivities.
Amaranth Modak by Chef Santosh Rawat, Executive Pastry Chef, The St. Regis Mumbai
Ingredients
- ½ cup black jaggery
- 1 tsp ghee
- ½ cup amaranth (rajgira)
Method
- Heat a kadhai and add amaranth seeds. Stir it constantly.
- Once all the amaranth seeds are puffed, take them out immediately and place on a plate to cool.
- In a kadhai add one spoon of ghee and the chopped jaggery.
- Once the jaggery melts, cook for another 3-4 minutes.
- Once you see foam appear on the melted jaggery, remove from heat and pour over the puffed amaranth. Mix well.
- Grease the modak mould with ghee and fill with the amaranth mixture, press it firmly.
- Gently remove the modak from the mould and garnish with gold leaf (optional). Store in an airtight container.
Vanilla Modak by Shweta Agarwal, Founder, Genda Phool
Ingredients
- 1 ltr milk
- 40 gm sugar
- 5 gm vanilla powder
Method
- Add the milk to a pot and start stirring it. As the milk reaches the boiling temperature, add sugar.
- When it starts to thicken, add vanilla powder.
- Cook further till it reaches a fudge (mawa) consistency.
- Let it cool down at room temperature.
- Take small portions and make balls of the dough. Cover them with a moist cloth.
- Press each ball into the modak mould tightly and de-mould carefully. All done!
Ragi And Hibiscus Modaks by Kushkant Tripathi, Director of Food and Beverage, Intercontinental
Ingredients
- 10-15 rose petals
- 10-15 hibiscus flower petals
- 3 whole figs
- 3 whole dates
- 2 gm saffron
- 50 gm grated coconut
- 100 gm ragi flour
- 200 gm rice flour
- A pinch of cardamom powder
- 300 ml water
Method
- Boil some water in a pot. Add 1 gm saffron, shredded rose and hibiscus petals to the boiling water and boil till it releases a bright red colour.
- To the mixture, first, add rice flour and mix, followed by ragi flour.
- Mix it well to form a dough consistency and let it rest for 10 minutes.
- For the stuffing, add chopped figs, chopped dates, grated coconut, rose and hibiscus petals, remaining saffron and cardamom powder to a pan and mix well.
- Cook this mixture for 5 minutes to lightly roast it till all ingredients are mixed well and set aside.
- Take a bit of dough and roll it into a ball 2 inches wide. With a rolling pin, roll out the dough ball as thin as possible into a round shape.
- Place the round sheet on your palm and add a spoonful of the stuffing in the centre.
- Pinch the ends of the sheet together, forming pleats as you go around the sheet.
- Slowly close the pleats together till the tips meet and pinch the top to close the opening. Repeat the process with the remaining modaks.
- Place a steamer in a pan filled with water. Line the steamer with a banana leaf, grease it with some oil and place the modaks for steaming.
- Steam for 10 mins. Remove from the steamer and garnish with petals and saffron. Serve hot.
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