Sunday, January 18, 2009

JIL JIL JIGAR DHANDA



The recent celebrations in the city, Chennai Sangamam were quite a hit with the public. since they had programs at the nageswara park where I walk every evening I was witness to some awesome dances and music. but the icing on the cake was the food. we had some yummy food stalls courtesy the Taj, Rain tree and Oriental cuisine. I got a taste of the adai avial, pongal, ragi sevai and pasi parupu dosai- all of them equally delicious. but my favorite was the jil jil jigar dhanda! yeah that is a drink from Madurai. dervied from the hindi word jigar thanda- which means cooling for the body- this drink wad addicting. out of curiosity I spoke to Peer Mohammed who was here all the way from Madurai with his famous jigar dhanda. He says they boil 40 litres of milk, until it is down to 10 litres. then they add nannari syrup, sugar and badam gondu!......and add loads of ice and keep mixing and this delicious drink is ready. Absoutley addicting for the milk lover in me.......I watched the dancers from Barnala in Punjab go balle balle as I downed a second glass of jigar dhanda and said yummmmmmmm! this is what I call getting a true taste of culture :-)

3 comments:

Aarthi said...

Hi Shivani,
nice blog..hearing abt jil jihar thanda for the 1st time! looks yummy..saw ur mom's beauty tip too! amazing! will read more artcles

Gopal Singh said...

ya its really cool. I found it recently in Chennai. not only the word "Jigarthanda" derived from hindi but this recipe also came from Kutch, Gujrat. i also heard tht someone learnt it from Burma and he started doing business here. Now Jigarthanda is quite fancy in chennai and we are actually missing some original ingredients like Sabudana and cottonseed etc.

ashwin said...

hi, this is ashwin. As ur talking about jigarthanda i too want to share some thing about that. Me along with five of my friends started the jigarthanda shop at chennai now. The shops are at Adambakkam (jayamagalam stores), Alwarpet (Nilgris) and Triplicane (back side of zambazar police station. If anyone want to taste the drink you are always welcome to our shop.