Ganeshotsav is here and as we all know Modak is the favourite food of Lord Ganesh. During Ganesh festival, Maharashtrian houses or any house who keep the Ganesh idols, prepare Modak is a ritual. Modak is traditionally prepared on the first day of the festival. They are prepared in many ways but the flavour will be always sweet and delicious. They may be prepared in traditional recipe or bought from sweet shop in its modern avatar in mawa, dry fruits or chocolate also in many innovative flavours, Modak will always be at the heart of Ganeshotsav.
Our traditional Modak are prepared in many different ways. In my family it is always “Ukadiche Modak i.e. the steamed rice flour modaks with fresh coconut and jaggery stuffing and with homemade ghee liberally drizzled on the top. These are luscious, mildly sweet, and fragrant with cardamom and nutmeg. In my family ‘Ukdiche Modak’ are absolute favourite.For this modak the cover is from rice flour. But sometimes this cover is prepared from fine semolina (Rava) the same way as rice flour cover is prepared. These taste equally good.
Next in line is wheat flour modak.Our regular chapati flour is used for cover and modak are steamed just as rice flour modak.The first time I cooked these I was skeptical. I tried these with leftover chapati dough and coconut jaggery filling. It worked like match-made in heaven.
The stuffing for modak usually is coconut and jaggery. The jaggery gets replaced by sugar. For fried modak cover changes to wheat flour and stuffing is of desiccated coconut, sugar or jaggery. Some home chefs replace sugar and jaggery with dates. Addition of mawa, different dry fruits to the stuffing also has become very common. My South Indian friends introduced me to Kozhukattai, South Indian modak. These are steamed rice flour modak .Along with coconut jaggery mixture few more different stuffings are used. One is seame seed and jaggery mixture, seame seeds are roasted, pounded coarsely and mixed with jaggery.
The same friends told me about the savoury modak. Savoury stuffing was made from soaked udid dal. When you take a bite you get the waft of fodani or tadka you have added to the ground dal. This is also in my favourites list.
When circumstances made me concentrate more on savoury modak . I developed my own savoury modak. I took the casing from our original ukadiche modak and I put savoury green peas stuffing inside, steamed these and I had a winning combination.
So far I have sampled many a modak and I have tried many in my kitchen. But for Ganesh chaturthi only Ukadiche modak find a place on my dining table with their extraordinary flavour and texture are unsurpassable. No wonder Lord Ganesh requires twenty one of them.