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Mung kavum
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Mung kavum

Mung bean diamond sweets

Mung kavum, the neat golden diamonds that sit beside kavum and kokis on the April New Year table, take a whole afternoon, which is why Sinhala grandmothers often make them with a crowd of helpers and why the shop-bought ones never taste the same. Whole mung beans are toasted until fragrant and ground to a fine powder, mixed with roasted rice flour and hot treacle into a firm, sticky dough, then rolled, cut into diamonds, dipped in a thin coconut milk and turmeric batter and fried. The outside is crisp and yellow, the inside dense, nutty and sweet. Beginners often roll the dough too thick, which leaves the middle pasty while the batter browns; keep it about 1 cm. Rice flour and mung beans are both naturally gluten free. Chef's tip: sift the ground mung through a fine sieve and regrind what is left, because grainy flour makes the dough crumble at the cutting stage.

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