Ingredients
Makes 12 modaks. Scale using the Modak Calculator. Tap any ingredient to tick it off.
Method
Prepare the jackfruit
Remove seeds and fibrous core from ripe jackfruit. Finely chop the sweet pods into 1cm pieces. Ripe jackfruit should be intensely fragrant and very sweet.
Cook the filling
Combine jackfruit and jaggery in a heavy pan over medium heat. Cook 5 minutes until jaggery melts. Add coconut and cook 8–10 more minutes until dry and fragrant. Add cardamom, ginger, nutmeg off heat. Cool completely.
Make the dough
Standard: boil water with salt and coconut oil, add flour at once, stir, rest, knead 2–3 minutes.
Shape and seal firmly
25g portions. The jackfruit filling is fragrant and slightly stickier than plain coconut. Seal the peak very firmly — jackfruit moisture makes it prone to seeping.
Steam 12–14 minutes
Slightly longer than standard due to jackfruit moisture. On banana leaf — in Goa, jackfruit leaves are sometimes used instead, adding a subtle additional fragrance.
Tips & Variations
Fresh ripe jackfruit: March–June in Maharashtra and Goa, April–August in Kerala and Karnataka. Out of season: canned ripe jackfruit (not green/young) works — drain and chop, reduce cooking by 3 minutes.
This recipe requires ripe sweet jackfruit only. Green (unripe) jackfruit has a completely different flavour — savoury and starchy — and would produce an unpleasant modak.
Jackfruit modak is associated with Ganesh Chaturthi in Goa, where jackfruit season and festival often overlap. The smell of jackfruit filling steaming is the smell of the Goan festival kitchen.
About This Recipe
Jackfruit modak belongs to Goa and coastal Karnataka — it is made when the jackfruit tree in the garden is producing at its peak, just before or during the festival. Using what the land provides at the moment of the festival is the essence of seasonal prasad. Jackfruit modak is an act of gratitude to the land as much as devotion to Ganesha.