Chushi Pithe'r Payesh

Making payesh is as good as meditation for me - with a dessert to look forward to at the end of the process. Payesh takes patience and needs attention and concentration, just like I imagine meditation does. The process is simple but it's slow and it takes time. And practice. Just like meditation. And I find it calming and steadying, just like meditation is supposed to be. So I make payesh more often than I meditate.

My last visit to Kolkata threw up many new ingredients as I wandered markets and melas whenever I had the chance. Among the myriad things I saw was Chushi or Choshi Pithe - small rice shaped dumplings made with either white flour or rice - used in payesh. It reminded me of 'ghavlye', a similar dumpling made in Maharashtrian households and also used in kheer. Payesh and kheer are both desserts made by reducing milk till half and then adding flavours, sweetness, and a thickener in the form of either rice, vermicelli, and occasionally these rice-like tiny dumplings. Similar dumplings are made among many communities across the country.

Chushi pithe are extremely laborious to make and as a result not many women make them any more. Who has the time?! Fortunately there are enough enterprising women from villages and small towns who are happy to make these labour-intensive products and bring them to the big cities for sale. I bought several packets and once back home in Kharghar I made Chushi Pithe'r Payesh at the first chance.




The lady who sold me the pithe gave me very simple instructions. Fry the pithe in ghee till it's a nice golden brown and keep aside. Make payesh as you normally do adding the pithe to the reducing milk so it cooks properly. That's all.

Chushi Pithe'r Payesh

2 litres full fat Milk
1 cup Chushi Pithe
1 cup fine Sugar
5 Cardamom pods
3 Indian bay leaves or Tej patta
2 - 3 tbsp Ghee
1/4 cup Raisins

In a thick bottomed vessel bring the milk to a boil and then simmer over medium heat to reduce it to half. Put in the cardamom pods and the tej patta while the milk is reducing. Remember to pop open the cardamom pods.

In a small pan heat some ghee. Use good quality ghee and not vanaspati. Once the ghee is hot fry the chushi pithe till the grains turn a light golden brown. This takes just 10 to 15 seconds so keep an eye on it while frying. Do it in batches if necessary. Drain off the ghee and keep the fried pithe aside.
In the same ghee fry the raisins and keep aside.

Once the milk has come to a boil add the fried pithe to the milk so it cooks while the milk reduces. Stir gently to ensure the pithe doesn't stick and form clumps. Let the milk simmer gently and reduce till at least half. The colour will change to a light pinkish brown. Check that the pithe is cooked through and isn't hard in the centre.

Add the sugar and stir nicely to combine. Add the fried raisins too keeping aside a few for garnishing later. Let the payesh cook for another 10 minutes or so till it is as thick as you like it. Remember payesh will thicken as it cools so don't reduce the milk too much or you will end up with a solid pudding.

Remove the payesh to a serving bowl and garnish with the remaining fried raisins. You can also add lightly fried cashew nuts or almond slivers to the garnish.

Lebu Sondesh - Lemon scented Sweet Cottage Cheese

Sondesh is something that is quintessentially Bengali and you will find it hard to find a Bengali who doesn't like this subtly flavoured fresh cottage cheese sweet. I'm not crazy about it but I do enjoy a couple of them once in a way, and always have a few when I'm in Kolkata.

Over the last couple of visits there I have bought myself quite a pile of sondesh moulds. These are available in the markets in Kolkata, usually in the shops that sell paraphernalia related to religious functions and rituals.

I also had a pile of fragrant gondhoraj lemons waiting to be used. So I decided to make sondesh with gondhoraj lemon zest for flavour instead of the usual cardamom.

Sondesh with Gondhoraj Lebu

2 litres full fat buffalo milk
2-3 tbsp lemon juice as required. I used Dabur Lemoneez
3 tbsp castor sugar
zest of 2 gondhoraj lemons, or of 4 regular limes
elbow grease
Sondesh moulds smeared with ghee

Bring the milk to a boil in a large vessel. Pour in the lemon juice and stir well. The milk will split into solids and whey. Let it boil gently for a couple of minutes so that the whey and the solids are completely separated.

Line a colander with a fine cheesecloth or large piece of muslin and then pour the split milk into the colander carefully. Let the whey drain out.

Gather the cloth together to make a bundle and hang up the fresh cottage cheese to drain. Squeeze out as much whey as you can, but be careful, it's hot. Let  it hang over the kitchen sink tied to your faucet for 30 to 45 minutes. While you want most of the whey to drain off you don't want a dried out cheese. It must remain moist.

In a clean plate take out the drained cheese.

Now's the time to use that elbow grease! Knead the cheese well for a as long as it takes to get a smooth texture that is as free of granules as possible. I broke it up and then pushed it to one side of the plate. Then little by little I pressed the cheese down on the plate with my thumb. In this way go through all the cheese, squashing and kneading as you go. I think a pav bhaji masher might be useful here, but since I don't have one I went the traditional way. Eventually you should have a smooth ball of soft cottage cheese.

Add the sugar and the lemon zest and knead it all in well for another 3 -4 minutes. Taste the mixture and add sugar if you need it.

Now comes the fun part. Take out your best non stick pan or wok and cook the kneaded cheese for 4 to 5 minutes stirring all the time. Make sure the pan is squeaky clean because the cheese will absorb any smells or flavours from the pan. I tried to mash the cheese further with a wooden spatula as it cooked. The cheese will get soft and pliable. Don't wait for it to harden or your sondesh will not form into the shapes, it will crack. That's because the cheese hardens as it cools.

Remove the cheese from the heat. Now take small amounts of the sondesh mixture and put it on the greased mould. Press the mixture in gently so the impression of the design comes through nicely. Leave it in the mould for a couple of minutes and then unmould gently and arrange your sondesh on a pretty plate.  Work as quickly as you can and heat the sondesh mixture slightly if it has gone cold.

If you don't have the traditional moulds you could even use the silicon chocolate moulds, or simply make little balls and press down to flatten like we do for pedas. Sprinkle some lemon zest on top of the ready sondesh and they're ready.

Marathon Bloggers Project 52

Plum Clafoutis - A Simple French Dessert

The hubby saw the box of plums I had bought and demanded a Clafoutis made with the fruit. The word Clafoutis always made me imagine a light frothy French confection that would be decadent, and difficult to make. Now I had to make it.

I looked around on the Net and found, much to my surprise that a Clafoutis is a ridiculously simple dessert and it would be quite a doddle to make. This baby was right up my street!

Plum Clafoutis

8 -10 semi ripe plums, washed, halved and stone removed
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup cream or fresh malai
butter
4 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2-3 tsps brown sugar
2 tsps maida

Method
Preheat the oven at 180C.
Halve the plums and remove the seed. Try to keep the hemispheres of fruit as intact as you can. The seed can stay stubbornly stuck so use a knife to prise it out.
In a saucepan heat the milk, malai/cream and vanilla till it just begins to bubble. I used fresh malai off the top of a pan of fresh full fat milk I had boiled earlier and cooled in the fridge. Stir it and take it off the heat. Leave aside to cool.
Whisk the eggs and the powdered sugar till combined. Add the flour a little at a time and continue to whisk till it is all blended in. Make sure there are no flour lumps.
Wipe your pie dish clean and melt some butter on it. Just pop it into the preheated oven and wait for it to start bubbling. Place the plums cut side down on the butter. Now sprinkle the brown sugar on the plums and the spaces between and put the pie dish back in the oven. Cook the plums for 5 to 8 minutes.
Combine the egg and sugar mixture with the cooled milk and cream. Whisk it well and pour it onto the plums carefully. Put the dish back into the oven and let it bake for 25 to 30 minutes till the custard is set and has a nice golden look.
This tastes best served hot. You can serve it with ice cream and also dust it with icing sugar if you like. The hubby devoured it as it was :)

I adapted this recipe from here. I have halved the quantities approximately and fiddled around with the ingredients to suit our tastes.

Marathon Bloggers Project 52

Gajar ka Halwa - Indian Carrot and Milk Pudding

It started towards the end of October - as the weather cooled in the north I saw picture after picture of the delicious red carrots flooding every food group board on Facebook and more often than not, people were making gajar ka halwa with those carrots. 

I have always disliked Gajar ka Halwa. Once again I have a seemingly stupid reason for my dislike. My dad liked to cook and as most men, especially in those days, he was not into making mundane daal, bhaat, torkari, but liked to cook up the fancy and complicated stuff. The fact that slave labour (me) was available inhouse was an added benefit, I'm sure! And so gajar ka halwa featured often. 

I would be duly sent upstairs to our neighbour's house to get their grater. It was a big red plastic bowl with a white grater that fitted on as a lid. 30 years ago it was unusual and uber cool. Anyway, I hated that grater because I'd be the one stuck grating that mountain of carrots. Okay. Honestly, it was probably just a kilo of carrots but to a 9 year old it was a mountain. I'm not surprised that I remember nothing about the process of making the halwa apart from the grating. I seem to have deleted it all out of my memories! 

Well I am past 40 now and I like to think I have grown up enough to get over the trauma of grating those mountains of carrots. And so I set out to make gajar ka halwa myself. No. I didn't grate any carrots - I got my cook to do that part of the job ;)

Having seen tons of Gajar ka Halwa posts on Chef at Large on Facebook I asked for a recipe. The answers were instantaneous and I had a whole load of fool proof recipes to choose from. Ultimately the Hubby selected one that he felt was the most authentic one and it appealed to me too because it had no short cuts.I like to do a recipe the correct way the first time and only after that pare down the method for an easier version for future use. 

Thank you Harpreet Bedi Chadha for sharing your recipe. 

Gajar ka Halwa (with my own tweaks)

2 kg Red carrots, grated

2 lts full fat buffalo milk

5 green cardamom, seeds removed and reserved. 

Pure ghee, as required

Sugar - roughly 1 cup. Use more or less according to how sweet you want the halwa to be

15 blanched and halved almonds

20 raisins and 10 cashew nuts for garnishing. 

Take a thick bottomed largish vessel to make the halwa. 

Put in the grated carrots and the full fat milk and bring both to a boil. Pound the cardamom seeds gently in a mortar and pestle or under a rolling pin and add them to the boiling carrot and milk. Reduce the flame and let the milk get absorbed into the carrots and reduce. 

Stir every few minutes ensuring that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the vessel. This is going to take a few hours so there is no option but to be patient. Keep stirring every five minutes or so.

In the mean time you can peel the blanched almonds and halve them. Put them aside. Heat a little ghee in a separate pan and fry the almonds very lightly. If you're using raisins or cashews, fry them too. Drain out the excess ghee and leave these aside. 

Eventually the milk in the carrot-milk mix will reduce and you will get to the final stages of the halwa. 

Add the sugar and stir well. The sugar will dissolve and the halwa will get watery again. 

Stir away patiently till the halwa reaches a nice thick halwa-like consistency. If you like you can add a few of the raisins and a few nuts (chopped) to the halwa. Pour in the ghee too. Mix well and your halwa is ready. 

Remove to a pretty bowl and decorate with the remaining nuts and raisins. 

Marathon Bloggers Project 52

A Food Bloggers' Pot Luck - an inspiration for Payesh

Sometimes my Bengali genes give out a loud shout and I am compelled to cook something essentially Bengali. No fusion, no inspired creative moments allowed, for once I have to follow the rules. Coincidentally while my genes were shouting the Mumbai Bloggers Pot Luck diner was announced and voila! I had an audience too. I decided to make Payesh.

Payesh is an auspicious milk preparation made on birthdays in nearly all Bengali households. All communities across India probably have their own version of sweetened reduced milk cooked with rice/sooji/vermicelli, etc. Us Bongs, we make Payesh.

I have always had an aversion to sweets and milk products and defiantly refused to have any Payesh all through my childhood. Not that I would eat it today. I don't like milk and now I am also diabetic but that's a different matter entirely...

Anyway, since the rest of the world does appreciate the simple poetry of a well made Payesh, I decided to make it for the dinner.

First I called my Mom and quickly went through the procedure and then I got on with it.

Here's what you need for Payesh for 10 to 15 people

3 litres full fat milk
5 tablespoons sugar (use more if you prefer)
2 tablespoons Gobindo Bhog rice
10 green cardamoms
4 bay leaves
a pinch of salt
raisins
LOTS of patience

Wash and soak the rice for half an hour. De-stalk the raisins and soak them separately.

Bring the milk to a boil in a large heavy bottomed vessel. I used a copper 'kalai' vessel that my Mom in law used to make biriyani. The thick bottom prevents the milk from scorching at the base and using a large vessel helps in minimising the chances of the milk boiling over.

Once the milk is boiled reduce the heat and add the bay leaves and the cardamom pods. Split the pods so the flavours can blend easily.

Drain the rice on a small napkin so that the water is completely removed. Drop the rice into the simmering milk and let it cook as the milk reduces. Stir this occasionally and ensure that the milk does not stick to the bottom of the vessel and burn.

After an hour or so the milk would have reduced considerably and the rice grains should have literally 'exploded'. Just 2 tablespoons of rice will increase tremendously, trust me! If the milk needs to reduce some more, simmer longer.

Once the rice is cooked and the milk has reduced sufficiently add the sugar. Stir well and cook for another 15 to 20 minutes. Put in the raisins too.

The Payesh will thicken as it cools and a gorgeous creamy malai will form so decant it into your serving bowl while it is still hot. Decorate with flaked almonds or pistachios if you like.

A deceptively simple dish to make one thing a Payesh maker needs in abundance is patience. There isn't all that much to actively do. There's hardly any prep required. But you have to keep your eye on it. The milk burns and your Payesh is ruined. Reduce the milk too much and you get a thick porridge instead of a creamy rich Payesh which is in fact what happened. An extra litre of milk was boiled and reduced in a panic and the Payesh was 'repaired'.

The recipe and proportions above will work perfectly as long as you keep your eye on things :)

Photo Credit: Jyotika Purwar

Here's the Payesh that I made for the Mumbai Food Bloggers' Pot Luck on Saturday 30th July at Gostana

Pancakes!!!

I learned how to make pancakes when I was ...maybe...9 or 10 years old. I made them recently for breakfast, after a really long time and was flooded with memories of my childhood. This was one of the first things I could cook from scratch without anyone's help and ma allowed me to make it quite often :)

The thumb rule that I remember for pancakes is 1+1+1.

1 cup of milk
1 egg
1 cup flour, sifted.
Mix all three in a large bowl and add some salt. Let it rest in the fridge, covered, for at least half and hour.
In a small non-stick pan, add a little oil and ladle in the batter, enough to cover the base. Once it bubbles, flip the pancake and cook the other side. This should take about 3 to 4 minutes in all.

You can make them thick or thin, as you prefer. To make thin pancakes, simply add some milk to the batter.





Serve hot with honey, peanut butter, Nutella, cheese spread, jam, marmalade, sauteed mushrooms....whatever you like!! We had ours with honey and with bacon rashers.