Basundi and my Sweet Tooth

I have this incredibly sweet sweet tooth. It just shouts out to be satisfied after every single meal. It controls me totally and just as soon as my lunch is over, it starts shrilly demanding "Give me sweet, give me sweet!!! NOW NOW NOW!!!". Whatever my good intentions and before I can even comprehend what is happening, something sweet is already down my throat. Swallowed, digested and then total regret sets in. But the damage is already done. Like someone famously said "a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.." In my life there have been too many minutes on the lips to count. Ask my hips or my tummy. They know that fact only too well..

I have a particular affinity for Indian sweets. Lot of people feel that Indian sweets are way too sweet but in my opinion that single factor makes it so much more appealing to me. At one time, I could wake up at 6 am and have two jangris without batting an eyelid. Thank god those days are now behind me.

I have been wanting to make Basundi for the longest time. It is so yummy, served deliciously cold and sweet with a few nuts adding a crunch as you eat it.

It is simple to make but just takes forever and forever. It takes a good 2 to 3 hours for the milk to thicken down to the level required. Now here comes technology to my rescue. We have a new fangled thing called the Induction stove at home. We have it for back up just in case.. It took me all of 1 hour from start to finish to make the Basundi. That made it a lot of fun and I had to watch it only till the milk thickened somewhat. After that, it took care of itself.

Now for the ingredients and the method..

Ingredients:

2 litres full fat milk

150 grams sugar

few strands of saffron

juice of 1 lime

almonds sliced for garnish

Method:

Put the milk in the thick bottomed vessel and bring to a rolling boil.

Add the saffron strands so that it adds its flavor and color as the milk boils.

Reduce the heat and let it boil down till it becomes 1/4 in quantity.

Add the juice of the lime so that the thickened milk curdles a bit.

Add the sugar and cook for a few minutes longer.

Garnish with sliced almonds and serve chilled.

ENJOY!!!!!

Fruit Trifle

One of my all time favourite desserts has to be the ubiquitous trifle. It is found on the menus of every single club that I have been to. I think it is one better legacies of the British Raj. As children, whenever we went to the club for a meal, it was always a trifle pudding that completed the outing. I am sure many of you out there will know exactly what I am talking about. It is with a lot fond memories that I decided to post about this wondeful dessert.

Though each chef has his or her own recipe, the basics are the same. One of the easiest desserts to make, it is more a matter of assembly rather than acutal cooking/baking. With simple easy to get ingredients, making this dessert is a real breeze.
A trifle is just varying layers of fruit, custards, cake, cream and jelly.



Ingredients:

Cake crumbs 250 grams ( You can use leftover cake slices, crumbs, whatever takes your fancy)
Custard powder- 2 tablespoons
Milk - 200 ml
Sugar - 3 tablespoons
Jelly - one packet of any flavor ( strawbery, raspberry being most preferred)
Water 200 ml
Jam - a couple of tablespoons
assorted fruit diced into bits
1/4 cup of fruit juice
Sweetened whipped cream - 200 ml

Method:
Make the custard :
Mix the custard powder in a tablespoon of cold milk. Heat the remaining milk till boiling. Mix the custard powder mixture into the boiling milk and stir briskly. Make sure there are no lumps. It also burns very easily so ensure that you are stirring all the time till it thickens. Add the sugar and mix well till sugar dissolves. Leave to cool down.
Make the jelly by heating the water till boiling and pour in the jelly crystals. Leave aside till set.
Take a decorative glass bowl. Press the cake crumbs into the base tightly.
Pour the juice over it evenly and soak it well.
Put the jam over this in a thin layer.
Place the fruit on top and spoon in the jelly in between.
Pour the cold custard over. Top up with the whipped cream.
Leave for a few hours in the refrigerator till all the flavors meld well together.

Serve cold and enjoy.

Peach Pie and the Arusuvai Friendship Chain

The other day I received a very pleasant surprise in the mail. It was from Srivalli of Cooking4allseasons. This was a surprise ingredient ( along with a very sweet letter seen above) sent to continue the Arusuvai friendship chain where we send something to a fellow blogger for them to make a dish using the surprise ingredient. She is one of the only fellow Chennai bloggers that I have met. Unfortunately the same reasons for not blogging are also the reasons for not meeting up with everyone.

She sent me a very sweet letter and a nicely packed little packet of something. It was a puzzling few minutes for me till I figured what it exactly was. Then it struck me. China grass.
Though vegetarians, I have always stuck to using gelatine in all my desserts as it was something I was used to doing. I never really tried out the vegetarian version of gelatine which is Agar Agar or popularly known as China Grass in India.

Agar or agar agar is a gelatinous substance chiefly used as a culture medium for microbial work. It is an unbranched polysaccharide obtained from the cell membrane of some species of red algae or seaweed. It can be used as a laxative, a vegetarian gelatin substitute, a thickener for soups, injellies, icecreams and Japanese desserts such as anmitsu, as a clarifying agent in brewing, and for paper sizing fabrics. The word agar comes from the Malay word agar-agar (meaning jelly). It is also known as kanten, agal-agal (Ceylon agar), or China grass. Chemically, agar is a polymer made up of subunits of the sugar galactose. Agar polysaccharides serve as the primary structural support for the algae's cell walls.
Agar-Agar is the sea's natural gelatin. White and semi-translucent, it is sold in packages as washed and dried strips or in powdered form. It can be used to make jellies, puddings and custards. For making jelly, it is boiled in water until the solids dissolve. One then adds sweetener, flavouring, colouring, fruit or vegetables, and pours the liquid into molds to be served as desserts and vegetable aspics, or incorporated with other desserts, such as a jelly layer on a cake.Agar-agar is approximately 80% fiber, so it can serve as a great intestinal regulator. Its bulk quality is behind one of the latest fad diets in Asia, the a Kanten diet. Once ingested, kanten triples in size and absorbs water. This results in the consumer feeling more full. Recently this diet has received some press coverage in the United States as well. The diet has shown promise in obesity studies.
In Indian cuisine, agar agar is known as "China Grass" and is used for making desserts.
( Source- Wikipedia)

So after a lot of brain storming and looking for things to make, I decided to use it exactly the same way as I did gelatin and used a recipe that I already had for a Peach Pie using yoghurt, just substituting the gelatin with the China Grass.
I had a lot of doubts about it as I was not sure if it was going to set ultimately, but I carried on regardless. The recipe called for 1 tablespoon of gelatin and this was something which proved very tricky. Not sure how much was a correct quantity of China Grass to substitute, I just forged ahead with the entire quantity that Srivalli sent. I had seen other recipes calling for 5 grams of China Grass but again I was not sure how much she sent. But thankfully the entire dessert set ( I will not say it was very well set, it was still pretty wobbly. Maybe, I need to up the quantity next time round).
In all this, I have to recount my kitchen disaster which almost happened. I left the china grass after dissolving to cool down before I added it to the yoghurt mixture. When I was ready to add it, IT had already set into this mass of jelly. I promise, it was still warm like I was supposed to keep it but it was this wobbly nicely set jelly. Anyway, I still added it to the mixture. I now had this nice tasting creamy base with all the absolutely hardened china grass bits floating in it. OOPS!!! You can say OOPS again. I just put the whole thing into the blender, said a little prayer and whirred it a bit. The bits disintegrated quite nicely and I poured into the crust, said another little prayer, and placed it into the fridge.
Yipppee!! It set in a nice wobbly fashion.
But the final product was quite delicious and looked interesting too until it started to collapse as I began taking the pictures. But it sure tasted good and I finally consoled myself that THAT is the bottomline, isn't it?

Now for the recipe....

200 grams Marie biscuits powdered
50 grams butter melted
2 tablespoons sugar powdered

600 grams yoghurt ( before draining the whey)
1 cup sugar
200 grams cream, whipped
5 grams (?) China grass ( or substituted with 1 tablespoon gelatin)
3/4 cup of water

1 can peaches drained
1 tablespoon cornflour
2 tablespoons sugar

Method:

Mix the biscuit crumbs, butter and sugar and press well into a pie dish to make a crust. Put in the freezer for a few minutes to harden.
Cut 4 peach halves into small pieces and puree the remaining in the blender.
Tie the yoghurt in a muslin cloth till all the whey drains out. Mix in the sugar well.
Soak the China Grass in water and put on very low heat and cook until dissolved well. KEEP WARM.
When bearably hot, add to the drained curd and sugar mixture.
Add the whipped cream to this.
Put the chopped peach bits on the crust.
Pour the curd, cream mixture on top. Leave to set in the refrigerator
In the meantime, mix the pureed peaches with the cornflour and the sugar and cook it over a low flame till it thickens and becomes glossy. Cool it down to room temperature.
When the dessert is set, pour the pureed peaches over. Leave to set fully and garnish with cream and mint leaves.

UPDATE:

To keep this awesome chain going, I am sending my secret ingredient to Laavanya of http://www.luvbitesforall.blogspot.com/. Hope she enjoys it and makes something interesting with it. Looking forward to it.

Banana Halwa

For a long time before I started this blog, I used to spend a lot of time reading all these blogs which are now so familiar. Drool over the pictures, sternly make up my mind that I will make this that and the other.

One of the recipes which caught my eye a long time ago was Banana Halwa which I saw in Indira's blog here. Knowing how much I love banana in any form, I was determined to try it for a longest while, but as usual just sat on it. I think this where all these food blogging events come in really handy. One gets down to things just because there is a date by which it has to be submitted.

Finally, today went and picked up the Nendram Pazham and got down to it.

This was an easy enough recipe - very simple and straight forward. I had to tweak it a bit because I did not have a couple of the ingredients. But I have to say the end product did not suffer because of this fact. It was delicious, not too rich and just what I need after my lunch. I have an extremely sweet tooth and this fitted the job to a T.

This is my entry to JFI : Bananas hosted by Mandira of Ahaar

Now for the recipe which I used:

Ingredients:

2 nendram pazham

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

2 teaspoons all purpose flour mixed in 1/4 cup water

2 tablespoons ghee

1 teaspoon cardamom powder

( I missed the lemon juice and cashewnuts as I did not have them handy. Lemon juice may have added that tang and clarified the sugar syrup, I am not sure. Cashews are only a garnish anyway. Also, I used far less ghee than what the original recipe called for as I wanted to watch the calories)

Method:

Peel , deseed the Banana fruit. Cut into small chunks.

Pressure cook for about 3 whistles and then when cool, mash in the mixie.

Heat the sugar along with the water. Cook till it reaches a one string consistency.

Mix in the mashed banana till well blended.

After is is a homogenous mass, add the flour / water mixture. Cook again till it looks well cooked. Slowly add the ghee little by little.

Finally add the cardamom powder and cashewnut if using.

Serve. And enjoy the compliments