And I take on my first ever Indian cooking challenge...

Its been 2 months since my last post, isn't it? Our move from Boston to Houston was a long wonderful winding road. We flew to Denver, CO and drove from there to San Diego CA. On our way we did devour some great food. From San Diego the wise guy flew to Boston for some last bits of work while I set sail to SFO and had a great time there- oh so much to eat, so little time!

More on that in a later post- but today read on for my first Indian Cooking Challenge post

The melt-in-your-mouth tirunelveli halwa

Ingredients

Wheat berries- 3/4 cups
Sugar- 1 cup
almonds & walnuts, chopped- 3/4 cup, reserve 1/4 cup for garnish
Ghee- 5 tbsp
cardamom- 1tsp

Pachai karpooram- a pinch
Food color

Method

Soak the wheat berries overnight.

Grind in a blender with about a cup of water. Strain the milk into a bowl. Return the husk to the blender and grind again with water. Strain and repeat the process about 4-5 times.

Note*: Clean the strainer and blender immediately, otherwise you would end up with hard crust

Let the milk stand for about 4-5 hrs. A thick precipitate will deposit on the lower part and the scum will float over the excess water that was added to aid grinding.

Decant the excess water and save the thicker milk portion.

Keep the nuts, cardamom, pachai karpooram and food color ready.

Place sugar with some water in a heavy bottomed pan on fire. Boil this down to a thick syrup

Note: It should form a very strong thread while pressed and pulled apart between the thumb and forefinger.

Add the milk, nuts, cardamom, karpooram and food color. Stir constantly. The wheat will cook to a transparent mass.

When it is thick add the ghee in small quantities. The ghee will initially float and then mix well with the cooking mass. It should get thicker and harder to stir.

Note: It will resemble a sheet of glass falling in a neat ribbon if dropped from a small height. The gloss will be distinct.

Turn the stove off.

Note: Leave the utensil on the stove for sometime. The heat of the stove and the thickness of the utensil aid further thickening of the halwa.

source for the notes- http://lata-raja.blogspot.com/2009/11/tirunelveli-halwa.html

Comments

From "The Baker's Daughter"

I love to read books and I love to cook- so "Cook the Books" event called out to me, what more can I say? When I didn't want to just sit around and catch up Breaking Bad episodes leading up to the finale yesterday, I threw these buns and some great vegan-gluten free strawberry cupcakes in the mix. The book chosen for the bi-monthly event Cook the Books is Sarah McCoy's "The Baker's Daughter "- a story about that intertwines food, history and a great narrative (toggles between WWII times in Germany and the present). I am just about a third done and so far like what I have read. I will post the review once I am done reading but in the meantime I leave you with these gorgeous buns that are traditionally made on St. Thomas Day that falls on Dec 21st (which also happens to be the shortest day). Thomasplitzchen Buns 1 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup raw sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1/4 cup almond milk Filli...

Cookies galore for friends- Lime Meltaways

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire- Aristotle You do understand that I had to do this, don't you? The 7 day-7 recipe marathon that a lot of us have signed up for, check Nupur's blog to check about rest of the players. This year, just like the last, I am making a bunch of cookies for friends. Lime meltaways as Martha Stewart calls them are the first of the lot. They have the very refreshing, very familiar citrus flavor and they were so delicate that I decided not to ship them. Ingredients 12 tbsp (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature (I did half butter and half crisco vegetable shortening) 1 cup confectioners' sugar Grated zest of 2 limes 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract 1 3/4 cups plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour 2 tbsp cornstarch 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg 1 tsp ginger powder 1/4 teaspoon salt Method Cream butter and 1/3 c...

Gingerbread house

Oh the warm smell of spices is the hallmark of the holiday season and is the one thing we all love, don't we? GInger is definitely one spice that I love to include in my cooking/baking expeditions during this time of the year. So I was naturally happy to see that this month we were doing the gingerbread house for this month's challenge, well it was a fleeting moment anyway until I realized that it was yet another kitchen mishap. Consider this my 10th new recipe and the 3rd in Nupur's marathon . The December 2009 Daring Baker's challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi . They chose to challenge Daring Bakers' everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes. I used Y's recipe Ingredients 1 cup butter, room temperature 1 cup brown sugar, well packed 2 tablespoons cinnamon 4 teaspoons ground g...

Soulful Creations

Search This Blog