Thati Nungu Payasam | Easy Tadgola(Palm fruit) Dessert - EASY SUMMER DESSERT

As a kid, I always looked forward to the summer vacations, as that was the time to meet up my cousins and have lots of fun.Summer vacations are also associated with lots of memories for me.The usual number would be 25-30 of us who gathered at our granny's place in bangarpet and if the number exceeded 60 , we used to meet at my dad's ancestral house. It was a large gathering every summer an hence the fun element was even larger.While we kids are busy playing,watching movies and finishing our summer assignments, the adults(the ladies of the family) used to be busy in the kitchen cooking various varieties .In summers our place used to be flooded with bags of mangoes and buckets of tadgola fruits and one room would be dedicated for the mangoes to ripen.It is just impossible to resist the temptation, when some one passes that room given the sweet aroma of the ripening mangoes.It used to be fun to chose one's own fruit every day and we all cousins used to sit together and enjoy the king of fruits messing up our hands.

Apart from mangoes, Tadgola is another fruit which we enjoy in the summer.Tadgola or Toddy Palm fruit is called 'Nungulu' or 'Munjalu' in Telugu and it is a natural body coolant and is quite good for summers.While those skins are peeled, we kids used to pick the tender tadgola fruit and pop them into our mouth leaving the hard ones aside.If the tadgola fruit is very hard it gets used in this quick and easy dessert.As the mangoes are also available in this season, generally it is paired with tadgola so that it can be served to such a large group.

Thati Nungu Payasam | Palm Fruit Dessert:
(Serves 3-4)

Ingredients:
500 ml Whole Milk
7-8 Tadgolas(Nungulu)
10-12 Almonds,soaked for 1 hr
3-4 tbsp Sugar
few strands of saffron(for garnish)
Method:

• Soak almonds in water for an hour or two and peel off the skin.Grind it to a paste using some milk.

• Boil milk and simmer it for a while to become thick until the milk reduces to half the volume for approx 15 mins.
• Add ground almond paste and sugar to it and stir continuously and boil on low flame for 2-3 mins.Check for the sweetness,if required add extra tbsp of sugar to it.Cool it until it comes to room temperature.

• Peel off the skin of tadgolas and cut into small pieces and keep them aside.
  
• Mix the chopped tadgolas with cooled milk mixture and refrigerate for 2-3 hrs before serving.

Garnish with saffron and serve it chilled.

Variations:

1. You can play with the flavors and add cardamom powder to the milk mixture.
2. You can make the dessert rich by adding condensed milk instead of sugar.
3. Add a couple of tbsps of fresh cream just before serving to make the dessert rich.
4. You can make Badam milk using MTR badam milk mixture and add chopped tadgola to it for a quick and east version.

Mango-Tadgola Dessert | Mamidipandu-Nungu Payasam:

Ingredients:
recipe ingredients same as above
1 ripen Mango,finely chopped

Method:

• Just follow the above procedure for tadgola dessert and add finely chopped ripen mango(preferably alphonsos) to it along with tadgola fruit.Adjust the sweetness according to your taste buds.