Gajjar Halwa and Celebrating the 10K milestone

Yes!!! Finally!!! Waited for a long time. I used to dream about it. When I first started the blog, I used to get so excited each time I got a hit. Everyday was something to look forward to. Get up wondering, how many new people have seen my blog today?


Then came along Food Blog Desam and my slow interaction with my fellow bloggers , and the numbers grew exponentially. It was a slow but very steady growth.


And now here I am having touched the 10,000 mark. ( I remember a movie, Twins where Danny Devito on hearing he could make 10 million dollars says "ten million dollars" in many different tones. Now if only I could write the words ten thousand in different ways. )
Ten thousand is a landmark figure and I am thrilled to be here.




To celebrate, I made Gajjar Halwa.


I once met a cook at a Guest House who was an old Sindhi man. He taught me this version of Gajjar Halwa. He is now no more but memories of his delicious Gajjar Halwa stay on.

It is a time consuming progress. Not laborious, just time consuming. Simple ingredients, and a very delectable result.

Gajjar Halwa is a hot favorite at home. Come December, we wait for the " Delhi" carrots to come in(the purple variety). Immediately we buy a few kilograms and now we are all set.




Ingredients

1 kg Purple carrots washed and peeled

1.5 litres milk ( seems like a lot but that is the key to yummy gajjar halwa)

350 grams sugar

3 tablespoons ghee

1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder

1 tablespoon each cashewnuts, almonds and raisins fried in a little ghee

Method:

Grate the carrots. Cook along with the milk till all the milk gets absorbed ( I warned you, it was going to be time consuming). This should easily take about an hour.

When done, the milk would have condensed into milk solids along with the cooked carrot.
Now add the ghee. Fry for a bit longer and then add the sugar. Keep cooking till the sugar dissolves well and is absorbed into the halwa.

Garnish with cashews, almonds and raisins and serve hot.

Enjoy.

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