Food I Eat: Jaggery Buckets

Winter is a wonderful time in Kolkata. The weather is cool (sometimes even cold) allowing fans and AC units to be turned off and sweaters and scarves become a uniform for every auto driver. The Book Fair will soon happen – a yearly affair that is the second largest in the world. Also it is time for Winter Jaggery.

Jaggery is a traditional Indian sugar. It is an unrefined concentrated form of cane juice, usually molded into cones or blocks. Most people consider this a “healthy” sugar used in cooking and in sweets. Especially in cuisines like Bengali food, which makes almost every dish with a dash of sweet to it. From Dal to Sandesh, jaggery is an integral part of Bengali cooking. I have yet to warm up to the use of sugar in my meals, but I do love the Jaggery Sandesh, or Gur Sandesh.

Sandesh is a sweet made from coconut (or milk, or paneer) and sugar (or jaggery). These are made in many shapes, with added flavors. There is one Sandesh that I love above all others. It is formed into a container that holds jaggery syrup. I found it hard to explain to people that these particular ones are what I liked (and wanted), so I gave them a name: Jaggery Buckets. I usually eat these in one gulp, so the syrup doesn’t drip off somewhere, like on my shirt.  I often eat more than one in a single sitting and I’ve never felt bad about this even once.