Sundh is a sweet treat that the people of Jammu enjoy during the winter months. If you're familiar with Panjiri, it's quite similar to it and has a very subtle difference - panjiri uses wheat flour and Khas Khas, which sundh doesn't, but other than that, they're exactly the same.
I won't urge having too much of it in a single sitting, and be very mindful of the serving size - it'll become quite evident why I'm saying this when I've gone through the ingredients. I've also been told by my elders that sundh was given to women in the final few weeks of their pregnancy and post childbirth to help with their nutritional needs, given the amount of fats and carbohydrates this has.
Getting exact quantities was a bit difficult for this one, because my elders largely rely on muscle memory, and it was quite an exercise for them to determine the exact numbers, but here's my best effort at exact amounts. Let's get down to it.
Ingredients
Ghee - around 150g
Almonds - 250g
Cashew nuts - 100g
Pistachio - 50g
Raisins - 100g
Coconut flakes - 100g
Dates - 100g
Muskmelon seeds - 50g
Sugar - 1 cup
Gond/Edible gum- 50g
Dry ginger powder - 2tsp
I think it's evident now why I warned about monitoring serving sizes :)
The process
So, we start up by heating up the ghee in a reasonably sized wok/deep bottom pan. Keep it on a low flame, because ghee doesn't have a very high smoke point, so a gentle flame is the way to go here.
Generalising things, the next steps involve us toasting the nuts etc one after the other for a couple of minutes in the ghee, and then taking them out and emptying it into another container.
So, first up, the almonds. Toast them in the ghee for a couple of minutes, and then take them out and move them into another container.
Then the cashews, followed by the pistachio, and then the dates. the coconut flakes follow on and then come the raisins. After the raisins, it's the edible gum. Lastly, the musk melon seeds.
Once the seeds have been taken out, we turn off the flame, and add the dry ginger powder into the skillet/pan to soak up any remaining ghee, which we then add it into the other container with all the other ingredients.
Let things cool down for a little bit and once they have, add in the sugar and mix well.
And that's really it, that's everything - start to finish. If you decide to ever make it, I'd love to know your experience and if you deviate from the recipe above, I'd love to know about that as well!
See you in the next post :)