Sagor Payes / Sabudana Kheer - A sweet dessert

Early part of this week was Maha Shivratri festival and I wanted to prepare something that will go well with the festival. Sabudana (tapioca pearl) also known as "Javarisi" in Tamil is rich in carbohydrates and is very filling, so it is commonly taken after breaking fast during religious festivals. Sabudana Kheer or Sagor payes as we Bengalis call it is a common recipe in all parts of India. It is cooked various ways. One of them is described here.

Preparation Time: - 15 min

Cooking Time: - 25~30 min

Servings: - 3~4 persons

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Sago/Sabudana
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 L Milk (full cream will make the preparation more tasty)
• 10-12 broken Cashew nuts
• 5~6 almonds
• Handful of Raisins
• 2~3 Cardamom or ¼ tsp Cardamom powder
• Sugar to taste
• Few Saffron strands
• 1 tbsp Ghee

Preparation:-

1. Boil milk in a pan for 10~15 min till it becomes ¾ l.
   
2. Heat ghee in a kadai and fry the sago for couple of minutes. This will prevent the sabudanas from joining with each other.
   
3. Take a little bit of milk and soak the sabudana in it for few minutes.
   
4. Again heat ghee in the same kadai and fry Cashew nuts and almonds with bay leaves until they turn golden in color. Keep aside these also.
   
5. Pour the sago to the thickened milk and set the burner to low flame.
6. Add sugar and stir gently. Let the sugar dissolve into milk.
7. Break the saffron strands into small pieces and pour them in the mix. Stir and cook for sometime.
8. Add previously roasted cashew nuts, almonds and bay leaves to the mixture.
9. Then add raisins and cardamom powder to the Kheer and stir. You can fry the raisins in step 4 along with cashew nuts but I prefer it to remain soft – hence I put them in here.
10. Switch off the flame after some time.

That’s all folks. You can eat hot or Freeze and serve cold. I prefer it cold as the taste is more pronounced that way.

Notes:-

1. Please note that if you want the kheer to be light then you can add water in the ratio 1:1 in the milk. The process remains same for this diluted version.
2. If you want to cook it in less time then you can skip frying the sabudana and pour them directly in the milk at step 1. Sabudana takes less time to get properly boiled compared to rice kheer.
3. If you think the sweet taste is marred by the taste of almonds you can blanch them – means soak them in hot water and remove the skin.

As always please feel free to comment, criticize and seek if any help is required. I am all ears.