Classic Shrikhand

My previous post didn’t quite make the cut for Express Indian: 6-ingredients-or-under because I had one ingredient too many and there were some protests that I was breaking my own rules. Little do you know that we Delhi-ites are like that only; we know rules are made so that they may be broken!  Nor are we about to turn over a new leaf just because the Commonwealth Games are round the bend and the honourable Minister of Home Affairs P. Chidambram feels we ought to mend our ways. Some things take time.

Meanwhile, here is another Express recipe, this time from TH’s home state of Maharashtra: second to none, the Shrikhand, a creamy dessert that comes together in no time and involves no cooking.  But do plan ahead, more so if you are planning to make the chukka (hung curd) at home.  Shrikhand tastes best if you allow 12-24 hours for the delicate  flavours to meld.  Some like shrikhand to be really smooth and achieve this by passing the mix through a sieve.  In our house we like some texture to shrikhand and skip this step.  My mother-in-law used to add a few spoonfuls of malai (clotted cream) to the chukka.  Every now and then there would be a tiny nugget of the soured malai that gave the shrikhand an additional richness and texture.  But gone are those days of buying fresh water-buffalo milk every morning (long live low-fat lifestyles), skimming the malai off, adding some yoghurt for culture, and collecting it over the next week or two to make butter and ghee. The buttermilk from churning this cultured clotted cream made the best kadhi. Undoubtedly. Sigh.

Another chance – a piece of cake?

Despite what you might be beginning to think. I haven’t fallen through any hole and disappeared from the surface of this earth.  Though, I came pretty close to just that this past weekend.

Given the hectic work pace of the past month, a fleeting thought that this might be our last chance to find some time with a young son on the threshold of adulthood (and college), and the by-now oppressive Delhi summer, we decided to steal a quick trip into the neighbouring Himalayan foothills.  A few calls and we were booked for an extended weekend in the tea gardens of Palampur.

But I am not going to be able to tell you anything about the tea there.  We never made it that far.  We had a nasty accident just a few hours out of Delhi and are really lucky to have made it back at all!  It even seemed a bit surreal after the crazy moments of the actual crash for the first few seconds of which we did not even know what was going on.  There we were turned 180 degrees and looking at the giant trailer that had just fish-tailed us!  Thankfully, the truck loaded with reinforcement steel wasn’t going too fast and came to a stop without dragging us too far or crushing into us further.  It was all over in a matter of seconds.  I looked around – all seemed okay, got out of the car and walked over to the side…. I was pretty amazed at my steady steps!

Good karma.   And another chance at A Mad Tea Party!

A silver lining of the botched trip was that I was able to be in town for a visiting friend.  Shilpa was going to come over with her daughter and friends for A Mad Tea Party.

Cheesecake in Delhi!

A very Happy New Year to all of you.  (No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth.)  May you have all you need.  Yes – need, not want.  And may you never want.  And what you cannot have may you be able to cook it up.

Do you crave things from long ago, from once-upon-a-time-when-I-lived-in-Cherapunji?  One of the things I have craved ever since I left the shores of America, besides New York style bagels, is a slice of cheesecake.  I have tried my luck with many restaurants here in Delhi. Other than The All American Diner at the IHC none have served anything worth a second fork-full, most being a jello+whipped-cream-on-a-crumb-base thing.

Coming soon….

Dec 30: Well, well…I didn’t really think anyone would be able to guess this!  But Bhavna got it right!  I might as well do as Manisha says and make this an edition of Riddle Me This even if a couple of weeks late!  Here are the rules for you, Bhavna.

You have to:

1. find something stranger than strange and,
2. post it on their blog within the next two weeks.
3. The quiz remains open for at least 1 day and at the most 2 days.
4. The person who guesses it correctly gets the torch and is the next host for Riddle Me This.
5. If the person who guesses correctly is the previous host, then that person will get to pick someone to pass the buck to from all those who made a guess.
6. And so on.
7. Please use the fabulous logo, also designed by Manisha, and link back to the host who passed the baton on to you.
8. Please do your best to keep this alive. Just think of how much fun it will be!

The clock is ticking… you have 48 hours starting now…

Here’s to the old…

I hope it has been a good year for all of you. If it’s been a mixed bag, as most years are, you’ll find yourself looking back at it with much nostalgia soon enough. The past has a way of turning rosy.

There was much that was good with this year for me too. Even though I slowed down in the frequency of my posts, it was always fun to discuss with you, dear reader. I have to admit that you are the best part of blogging! After each post, I eagerly await your response. Since I usually post in the night, checking the comments is the first thing I do next morning, with my morning cuppa by the side. For some of the posts there is as much information in the comments as there is in the post… even if occasionally the discussion gets off topic .

Thanks to some of you I got to taste many new flavours this year – some quite exotic!

Thanks to this blog I have made new friends at an age I never thought it possible; friends with whom I have found much in common, and much to learn from. What did The Learned One say about surrounding yourself with smart people? …some of it will rub off on you. So true.

I am late for Nupur’s event: Best of 2007, but I do want to do the roundup… Come along, grab some hot chocolate (while it is still snowing here) like I did, let’s walk the year again together…

My ten favourite posts (and recipes) from 2007:

Zafraani Zamodod

plain dahi

Zafraan (Persian)/kesar (Hindi)/kong (Kashmiri) or saffron, is the most expensive spice in the world, worth more than its weight in gold. In India it has always been measured in tolas, a unit of measure used for weighing gold (approximately 12gm). Kashmiri saffron with its long and deep maroon strands and a delicate aroma is the most valued in the world.

If you were ever disappointed with your Kashmiri saffron, and wondered what the fuss was all about, it is likely that you received saffron that was blended with the less expensive Spanish or Iranian saffron. A few months back my Mom got hold of a little of the real stuff through a cousin working in Kishtwar (Kashmir). Despite having all her culinary secrets revealed here she gave the entire lot to me! Isn’t she the best?

Very little Kashmiri saffron is exported, most of it being consumed within India. It is an ideal flavouring for Indian desserts which are mostly milk based. Occasionally it is also used in savory preparations such as pulaos and biryanis.

In Kashmir, it is primarily used in desserts such as the Modur Polav, and Kheer. On special occasions it may also be used to flavour Kahva. During weddings it gets sprinkled on top of our much loved zamodod/dahi (yoghurt) served in earthen pots to guests at the banquet, and also on the larger pots of dahi that make up the goodies (including nuts, fruits, and giant balls of rock-sugar, called nabud in Kashmiri, and mishri in Hindi) that the new bride brings with her to her new home. Those of you who have had Shrikhand will know how special dahi becomes with the addition of saffron.

A Piece of Cake…

Chiffon: a breezy fabric perfect for the Indian summer; lemons: refreshing, and in plenty from my parents’ trees; a birthday in the family. The perfect situation for a Lemon Chiffon Cake, just not the perfect weather to be in the kitchen. Far from it. Delhi has been an oven this past week with temperatures in the mid-40s. But already there are signs of some relief with cooler easterlies blowing our way.

But that was not the case when I was baking this cake. I made the cake a day earlier so that it would be ready for the frosting on the day of the big dinner. I wanted to incorporate some of the lemon bounty and decided to make this cake which is halfway between a true sponge cake and the heavier, more buttery, regular cakes. Using a little fat, and a lot of air from well beaten egg whites you get a sponge that is light but not dry.

A Rose is a Rose is a Rose!

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” spake the great Bard, though he may not have been alluding to the flower at all. And there are many magnificent rose hybrids today that are a lot of show, but hardly any legendary fragrance.

R is for Rosa. The Indian desi Gulab or musk rose (Rosa moschata), a very fragrant rose variety, is closely related to the Damascus rose (Rosa damascena) that originated in Persia. It produces small flowers (2 to 3 inch across) with red or pink petals. The petals retain their delicate fragrance long after drying, which makes them an ideal ingredient for potpourris. The desi gulab is grown on a large scale for the ayurveda and cosmetic industries.

Rose oil is an essential ingredient in itr, oil-based Indian perfumes. Rose water is used in the preparation of many Indian and middle-eastern dishes. A hint of fresh roses is what makes the rasgulla taste so refreshing. Gulab ark (rose extract) is also a key ingredient in Hamdard’s ever-popular summer drink Rooh Afza. Milk shakes made with Rooh Afza are part of my childhood memories – what a deliciously pretty pink that milk shake is!

Gulab, along with the fragrant mogra (Jasminum sambac), is (was?) the flower of choice, to decorate a newly-wed couple’s room (a bed of roses?). Some of the rose petals strewn on our bed got into the gaps of the mattresses and delicately perfumed the bed for months!

Roasted Banana Ice Cream

There are hazaar recipes that we bookmark to make later. Some of them we, thankfully, do get around to trying before they get lost in the oblivion of the must-do lists. This particular list is now threatening to become an avtar of Hanuman’s ever elongating tail.

Melissa showcased a recipe from David Lebovitz’ Perfect Scoop on A Traveler’s Lunchbox a few weeks ago that caught my eye. I am always looking for what to do with over-ripe bananas. If I buy bananas in excess of one , there is always one that cannot be saved. And with inflation at 6%, they are not as inexpensive as they used to be. Besides, I hate to throw food. Barely over-ripe bananas are brimming with goodness and full of flavour. The other thing is that while my son won’t eat bananas, he’ll eat things with bananas in them, banana nut muffins being his favourite banana treat.

I have served baked bananas as dessert many times. Slit bananas sprinkled with brown sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon, baked till soft, served with or without ice cream. That sugary lemony sauce looks and tastes divine, full of the ripeness of bananas. But banana in ice cream sounded intriguing. And there they were, three ripe bananas, calling out.

Modur Polav (Sweet Pulao)

Indira’s Independence Day Parade precipitated this…this blog, I mean. And immediately I thought of this fragrant pulao that I haven’t made in a while. It is one of the few sweet dishes that we Kashmiris have. It is not an exaggeration when I say that you can count all of them on one finger, if you count like my husband.

And I thought why not showcase one of them (how exclusive is that!) to celebrate our day of Independence. It is sweet, and it has saffron as its primary colour, the top colour in our tiranga. When served at wedding wazwans it is always the first course – that should tell you something about its stature for a people who don’t care much for the sweet stuff! In old days, sugar must have been dear in a place connected to the rest of the subcontinent only by treacherous mountain roads. The pulao is, quaintly, always paired with a tangy north-Indian kind of achar (the Pachranga kind).

After a few anxious moments on seeing Archana’s entry (Whew! That was close!) I present to you the Modur Polav (sweet pulao) from Kashmir, the northern-most state of India, as my entry at Mahanandi, the very inspiring blog by Indira. In my search for Andhra food I stumbled on her blog some time back and …you surely know what happens to foodies in places like that?

This pulao uses saffron as one of the main spices, the most exclusive variety of which grows right here in Kashmir. This is an authentic recipe from my Mom. I can vouch that it comes out great every time I make it – which is as well – imagine the benchmarks I must have had to confront marrying into a Maharashtrian household! All them varieties of sweets and me with my ‘repertoire’ of all of three. But to tell the truth, I have needed just two of those to have family and friends raving about my dessert-making abilities!! Those have been two real Aces up my sleeve.