These past few weeks have been such a beautiful time, so anticipated after a terribly stressful pregnancy during the pandemic. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend the first 40 days after the birth of our little Baby Q at my Mother’s house for what we call the ‘chilla’ period in Urdu, which is a time for rest and healing. I was taken care of, tended to, fed and looked after back to my usual self during my stay. Lots of chopri rotis, yakhnis, garam doodh, tari waale saalan, gajar ka halwa and of course, Panjeeri. For my first recipe after Baby Q, it felt fitting to post my Mother’s Panjeeri recipe. Because, heaven knows have I been eating a lot of it! With both of my post-partum recoveries, Panjeeri was a big thing. My Mother’s house being a huge joint family, anything and everything has the potential to be a celebration - even the makings of a Panjeeri. For my firstborn, my Chachi made my Panjeeri. It was a wonderfully nutty, sweet and traditional Panjeeri containing all the usual traditional nuts and seeds. With Baby Q, my Mother made my Panjeeri. A few days before Baby Q was born, we were sat discussing gathering the ingredients for the Panjeeri. My Mother said to me, ‘It’s all well and good that Panjeeri is tasty, but it’s primary role is of medicinal value. Taste is its secondary role. It shouldn’t be laden with sugar and should have more emphasis on healthy nuts and seeds, fresh and organic. We make it after delivery so the woman can heal, not so she can have a nice dessert’. Honestly, since she said that, the way I think about any sort of medicinal or healing food, not just Panjeeri, has really shifted.
🤔 What is Panjeeri?
Panjeeri is a mix of nuts, seeds and semolina, all lightly toasted in ghee and ground into a coarse, crunchy mix. Think of it as Desi granola. Oh, but it’s not just as simple as granola. It’s SO much more than that!
💪🏼 What are the benefits of Panjeeri?
Panjeeri has traditionally been used for centuries as a warming medicinal supplement, specifically for women post partum due to its warming, healing and strengthening properties. It’s a delicious supplement high in healthy fats and calories to aid in recovery. Additionally, many of the ingredients help support lactation in nursing mamas. Due to its warming properties, it’s generally great for bone health, muscular pains, recovery after an illness or surgery, during times of weakness, for e.g. during an illness - essentially anything that requires recovery and the building of strength, Panjeeri is great for. Since it’s full of super healthy fats, it’s a wonderful snack for children too. It’s high fat and calorie content also makes it great for anyone, adult or child, who needs to gain weight. Again, due to its warming properties it’s a great thing to make during the winter months! Cliché as it may be, I’m incredibly inclined to call Panjeeri a SUPERFOOD ) hasn’t that word fallen out of fashion?!). I credit so much of my rapid recovery and feeling well after the birth of Baby Q down to this recipe. I kept making fresh batches of this amazing supplement many weeks after birth and it definitely gave me a boost in energy to keep going on with the daily grind without feeling fatigued and weak.
🥥 Ingredients
Panjeeri is a mix of a variety of nuts and seeds including (and not limited to) almonds, cashews, walnuts, pistachios, coconut, lotus seeds, melon seeds, gum arabic, raisins. Some Panjeeri recipes use semolina, whilst others use wholewheat flour or lentils. I prefer to use semolina as it is thought to support lactation in nursing mamas. My Mother’s Panjeeri recipe isn’t the most conventional recipe out there, I’ll hand you that. She uses a whole load of additional ingredients, all of which superpower the traditional Panjeeri recipe with even more benefits and nutritional value. She uses a whole load of sesame seeds for calcium, super important after delivery, flaxseeds (great for nursing and for stomach health), sunflower and pumpkin seeds and perhaps the most unconventional, oats, for its well-known lactation promoting properties. All these unconventional ingredients work great with the already nutty and crunchy usual Panjeeri ingredients. She also was huge on making sure she made it with organic grass-fed ghee - ‘Why go through all the effort and cost of the nuts and seeds if we’re going to fry it in cheap vegetable-based banaspati ghee?’. It may be tempting to hold back on adding ghee to make this ‘healthier’, but trust me, don’t do it! Ghee isn’t just for the flavour, it also helps with the recovery and has those warming properties we want! So the great thing about making Panjeeri is - there doesn’t actually have to be an exact recipe! The recipe I’m sharing below is what my Mother made for me, but honestly you can totally take this and make it your own.
📃 Panjeeri Substitutions
You can substitute some of the nuts she used for your own choice, e.g. hazelnuts, pistachios, brazil nuts etc. Other really good add-ons/substitutions you can make include hemp seeds, chia seeds, dried dates (chuaray), any dried fruit. You can even increase the amounts of coconut/raisins or anything really as per your own taste. Similarly, if you don’t have a certain ingredient (some of these are hard to find even at speciality Desi stores!) that’s OK! You can totally omit them (although I definitely wouldn’t omit the semolina) and increase the quantity of the other ingredients to compensate. As for the sweetener, again you are free to make this your own. My mother used coconut sugar and gurr in hers, but any will work fine.
❓ Where Can I Find The Ingredients For Panjeeri?
Your best bet to get all of these ingredients, including the melon seeds, lotus seeds and gum arabic, is to go to a large Desi store. If you do not have access to a large Desi store, you can order the specialty ingredients online and source the rest of the ingredients from any large supermarket or health store.
⭐ Tips
Definitely do not try and fry all the ingredients in one go. It may be tempting to save time, but it will not go well. They all have different browning times - coconut for example will brown within moments of touching the ghee, whereas oats will take much longer. Ideally, you’d want to process the smaller seeds (flaxseeds, sesame seeds) separately. These blend quicker and may potentially become mushy/of nut butter consistency by the time the larger nuts are processed. If you do find your Panjeeri feels of a nut butter consistency, it’s probably because some of the nuts became too processed. Not to worry! Roast some more semolina and mix it through - this will powder out the buttery consistency. I kept my Panjeeri consistency very coarse, with some large nuts scattered through. That’s just how I like it. Some people prefer their Panjeeri to be much finer and if you do too, process it some more If you don’t want to use ghee, coconut oil works well too. I would not recommend butter as the milk solids will turn black and burn, nor would I recommend any other kind of cooking oil If after blending your Panjeeri looks pale, it’s likely you didn’t fry your ingredients enough. No worries, you can remedy this by giving the Panjeeri mix a second fry/toasting session - but please do this before you add the sugar! Do not do this with the sugar mixed in, the sugar will melt and get sticky, and then when the sugar cools down it’ll harden and it’ll just be a whole disaster. To extend the shelf life of your Panjeeri, do not blend the raisins or any dry fruit you may be using.
I’ve been dying to share this recipe with you all, I was only delayed because, gosh, two kids is a whole ’nother ball game! It’s going well and I’m soaking in every moment of all the tiny baby snuggles and cuddles (even the ones at 3am!) - and that’s meant getting this recipe up has taken it’s sweet time. But here it is now - I’m so excited to share this one with you because it is SO good for you and SO SO SO tasty! I savour every bite of this Panjeeri, knowing I’m having something SO delicious that is also SO good for me. I actually manage to get quite a lot of this in because being a Mum-of-two means I don’t typically get time to sit and eat a proper meal 3 times a day. I have a small box of Panjeeri in my bedside drawers as well as in the kitchen so I can snack on it anywhere I get a bit peckish! So here it is, finally… enjoy this recipe, with love! x
📋 Recipe
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