To cook something from one’s own culture is one thing and to cook from another is an altogether exhilarating experience. As soon as the recipes for ICC were announced, I was ecstatic. The challenge was to try at least 2 recipes and also to make sure that we tried which we have never made before. It suited me perfectly. There were many recipes which I had not even heard before – so I was looking forward to making each one of them.

The first thing that caught my eyes was the name – Nugul untallu. I have quite a handful of Andhra Friends with one of them being my best gal pal. They do know how hard I try to speak in my broken (..mm OK almost shattered) Telugu. But I can’t help it – the language has attraction. Hence I started off making the authentic named recipes with Black Sesame Ladoos being the first. I have never used black sesame in my cooking before hence this recipe was a must try for me.

I din”t know how it should taste, how it should have looked etc, but I pretty much followed the recipe instructions and it came out great. We liked it and my better half actually finished it off. Of course we had a good time chanting the name ‘Nugul Untallu’ so many times – no not making fun of it – although it might have sounded like one – but it was so catchy!! So here is what I did with this traditional Andhra Sweet.

Traditionally as Valli mentioned, these seeds were washed

and then sun dried which is what I did. Made use of the too hot weather outside for this purpose. It dried out within 10 minutes flat!!!

Dry roast them in a tawa and let them cool.

Once they are cool,

take about 2 – 3tbsp of grated or powdered jaggary

and run in a mixie. The amount of jaggary normally depends on the formation of laddoo. When you make a laddoo, it should stay in shape. Then you know the amount is enough. Also it depends on the fineness of the sesame powder. When you run in mixie, it becomes little oily which will help in holding the laddo shape.

My Notes

I powdered the black sesame coarsely first

then added the powdered jaggery to the sesame mixture

and pulsed them for few more seconds until they were well combined.

The mixture was oily enough to help me shape them into small balls (or laddos as Indians call them)

This should easily stay for a week. I got about 7 laddus for the shape I made.

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