Thakkaaya burfi/Thengai burfi/Coconut burfi

Coconut has been used by our ancestors and they lived a healthy life.Coconut has a lot of benefits.Its is rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals.Coconut oil has medicinal properties,you can find in many of the Ayurveda medicines.My mother says that when we are seasoning the dish with coconut oil it destroys the germs present in the food and is good for the stomach.Coconut oil is good for the skin and helps for the growth of hair.Drinking coconut water is good for kidney problems and intestinal disease like dysentery.It also gives instant energy.Coconut oil has disappeared from most of the kitchens because people have false perception that including coconut in any form will cause heart diseases etc,(my husband is a victim of it).I did a google research and explained him the benefits.Now he is slowly including the dishes prepared out of coconut oil or coconut in his diet.

Tengaya or Kobbari is the name of coconut in Telugu my mother tongue.I am a lover of coconut in any form.My mother being from Palakkad uses coconut in almost all of her dishes.For my birthday my mother prepares coconut burfi sweet.

For this Deepavali, I planned to prepare coconut burfi and searched for the recipe, I wouldn't call my mother as my Internet phone was out of order. I was a silent follower of a blog- mydiversekitchen by Aparna. Since Aparna and my mother hails from the same place most of her traditional recipes are similar to how my mother makes it, so kept following this blog for one and half years.In fact she is  my inspiration to start my blog.I have tried most of the traditional dishes in her blog and most of the recipes came out well in the first shot itself.This is mainly because of her detailed explanations.If we watch the cookery shows in  TV  we forget something but in Aparna's blog she describes beautifully, even a person who have not tired cooking yet will end up cooking good dishes.

I google searched the coconut burfi and couldn't find the recipes for coconut burfi as my mother makes, then I realised I have to check out in my diverse kitchen.There it was with great explanations. I went into the kitchen and prepared coconut burfi, the results was amazing!.The only change I made to Aparna's recipe was, I used cashew nuts to garnish coconut burfi and cut it in diamond shapes.

 



A closer shot of coconut burfi



Check out Aparna's blog here http://www.mydiversekitchen.com/2009/09/thengai-barfi-cardamom-flavoured-sweet.html for the recipe.I am sure you will become a follower of  this blog.In her blog she has Useful links, I learnt a lot from those links. Through this post I would like to say my heartfelt thanks to Aparna for sharing her knowledge!