Mahanandi

A Cup of Moong dal Payasam for Indian Sweets~101

If I have to choose between a cup of payasam and a slice of cake, I’d always go for the cup. Here, mothers prepare cakes lovingly; back in India, payasams are the norm. Every Saturday my mother would prepare payasam for puja naivedyam. I believe she prepared payasam mainly because of us, four little darlings:), who would come home from school hungry for something sweet. We had half-day school on Saturdays and afternoon meals at my mother’s home always included a type of payasam. Creamy rich with full of cashews and golden raisins, it was like spoonful of heaven on a warm afternoon.

Together between my mom and mother-in-law, there are recipes for at least a dozen different payasams. Who would really need a cook book when you have this type of rich resource right a phone call away? Because they all follow a basic method, it’s not that difficult to remember the procedure. Moong dal payasam is one such easy recipe I picked up from the family.

Moong dal is cooked in sweetened and thickened, rich poppy seed milk. Light golden hue, incredible, inviting aroma and delight to the senses – this is how I would describe this payasam.

Roasted in Ghee – Yellow Moong Dal

Recipe:

Moong dal, yellow (pesara pappu) – 1 cup
Sugar – 1 cup
Milk – 5 cups
Poppy seeds (Khus-khus, gasa gasalu) – ¼ cup
(Soaked in ½ cup of warm water for at least half an hour, to soften them)
Cashews and Golden Raisins, each – ¼ cup
Cardamom (Elachi, aluka) – 6
Ghee (neyyi) – 2 tablespoons

Prep Work:

1 In an iron skillet or tava, heat a teaspoon of ghee on medium heat. Add and roast, yellow moong dal until the color changes from yellow to light red and releases the wonderful fragrance. Remove them to a plate. Aromatherapy starts with this first step.

2 In the same iron skillet or tava, heat a tablespoon of ghee on medium heat. When it is hot, add and toast first golden raisins and then cashews. Golden Raisins puff up like little gold balloons and cashews turn from creamy white to light gold. Take care not to burn. Remove them to a plate.

3 Powder cardamom seeds to smooth powder in a mortar using the pestle or in a spice grinder.

Toasted in Ghee – Cashews and Golden Raisins

In a pressure cooker, take roasted moong dal, sugar, milk and soaked poppy seeds along with the water it’s soaked in. Mix and close the lid. Pressure cook until two whistles. Once all the valve pressure is released, remove the lid and with a wood-masher or immersion blender lightly mash the dal. Pressure-cooking is my method; I follow it mainly for the convenience of not stirring and for the speed. In actual recipe, they would take all the ingredients in a wide, thick-bottomed vessel and cook until the dal reaches fall-apart stage. If you don’t have a pressure cooker at home, then follow the second method. It may take little bit more time, but the end result will be worth the trouble, I promise.

Add the toasted cashews and golden raisins along with the ghee they toasted in. Also stir in the cardamom powder to the cooked payasam. Have a taste and add sugar and milk, if needed. Simmer the payasam on medium-low heat about 20 to 30 minutes, until it reaches thick, creamy consistency. Serve warm or cold.

A Cup of Moong Dal Payasam with Poppy Seeds, Cashews and Golden Raisins

Poppy seeds can block the cooker nozzle and that may create a mess, if they not soaked in warm water beforehand. Soak poppy seeds in water first, if you are to cook this in a pressure cooker.
Chana Dal Payasam – Link

Steam-Cooking the Ripe Plantain

Vijay loves all things plantain; so much so, he even wrote a guest post on homemade plantain chips on my blog few months ago. When I saw the recipe for sweet plantain dessert, at LG’s Ginger and Mango, I knew Vijay is going to like it.

Dessert with sweet plantains usually involves deep-frying, but this traditional Kerala recipe was different and healthy because it was steam cooked. I tried it with one ripe plantain and we both liked the end result. Easy dessert and they were like small venna(butter) biscuits, the kind that would melt in mouth but with gooey, banana sweetness.

Steam Cooked Ripe Plantain Piece ~ Removing the Skin

Recipe:
I ripe plantain
Ghee and sugar – half tablespoon each or to taste.

Wash and cut plantains into 4 or 5 pieces crosswise. Steam-cook them for about 15 to 20 minutes, until they soften. The outer skin will turn black and insides will turn soft. Remove the steam basket from steamer and let them cool. Peel the skin, cut each piece into 3 or 4 thin rounds.

Take melted ghee and sugar in a small cup. Stir until sugar melts in ghee. Lightly dip each plantain round in ghee-sugar mix, remove. Or sprinkle some sugar on top of these rounds and serve. Good treat, I think particularly for toddlers.

Sugar Coated Ripe Plantain Rounds and Semolina Upma with Peanut chutney ~ Our Simple Meal Today

Recipe: LG’s Ginger and Mango – Traditional Kerala Recipe

For some, mangoes are exotic fruits. For me, mango jam is exotic. Cooking the ripe fruit with sugar until they are mush and set, may be an age old technique of fruit preserving, but I never did that with mangoes until now. As part of JFI-Mango Event on May 1st, I’ve decided to try some new recipes and feature some of my old favorites with mangoes. This is one of the recipes that I selected to write about.

Who doesn’t love jam toast in the morning? It’s quick and easy. The type of breakfast many of us here, prefer on a weekday morning for that rush hour energy boost. But, often store-bought fruit preserves are loaded with more cheap corn syrup than the fruit. Preparing jam at home means controlling the sugar quantity that is added to the fruit to our liking.

My recipe for mango jam is simple. Pick ripe mangoes, peel and cut them into small cubes. Add little bit of limejuice to give that extra acidic edge and cook the fruit with sugar until it turns mushy and comes together like firm, yet moist solidity. Store it in a clean glass jar and refrigerate. Buy or bake bread and you don’t have to worry about “what’s for breakfast?” question, at least for few days.

Recipe:
(for about 1 cup of jam)

1 big, ripe mango
(Peeled and cut into small cubes – 1½ cup of cut fruit)
¼ cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of lime juice

Take them all in a clean pot. Cook on medium heat, stirring in-between. The sugar will melt and the fruit will break down. Within 15 to 20 minutes, The soggy, watery mass will come together into solid, moist lump, like halwa or kova and set. Turn off the heat. Let it cool completely and store in a clean jar.

One cup of mango jam lasted for 4 toasts for us. We couldn’t resist the quiveringly tender, rich yellow-sapphire like mango jam and consumed half of it even before cooling.

Recipe Notes:
My version is low sugar preserve.
For sweet commercial type of jam taste – increase the above sugar quantity to half cup.
Mango jam sets easily because of pectin content in mangoes. But if you are planning to prepare this jam on a big scale, adding some commercial pectin might be helpful.

The recipe that was in my mind to be tried is Sury‘s sweet potato dessert or Ranga Alur Puli. The fabulous food blogger, Sury from Delhi, not only writes about food but also studies American English. She recently published her first book “Making Out in America” on American vernacular. Congratulations Sury!

Few weeks ago, she blogged this recipe in her blog. The name of this sweet, the way it was prepared and the traditional Bengali aspect, all captured my interest. When I read her recipe, I did imagine the taste and I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Finally today I prepared this delicious sweet.

I did change the recipe little bit. Instead of adding flour and sugar to sweet potato pulp, I mixed it with gulab jamun powder. Also in addition to traditional coconut-milk-sugar fudge filling, I added some chocolate chips and butterscotch chips, just to create variety. I’ve been preparing gulab jamuns in this way, so I applied the same idea here.

Steam-cooked sweet potato (yam)

Recipe:
(for 15 pieces)
For Dough
1 medium sized sweet potato (yam)
1 packet of gulab jamun powder (100g)
For Filling
½ cup of coconut fudge (coconut-milk-sugar halwa)
¼ cup of chocolate chips – plain and butterscotch
To Deep Fry
2 cups of peanut oil or ghee
For Sugar Syrup
1 cup sugar
2 cups of water
1 teaspoon of rose water
¼ teaspoon of powdered cardamom

Chocolate Chips, Coconut Fudge, Sweet Potato-Gulab Jamun Dough & Dough balls

Preparation:
1. Cook the whole sweet potato on steam until just tender. Remove the skin and mash the sweet potato to smooth paste.

2. Take gulab jamun powder in a vessel. Mix it with sweet potato paste. The moisture of sweet potato is enough to prepare a firm dough. After a rest period of 15 minutes or so, divide the dough into big marble sized rounds.

3. Make a dimple by pressing the dough ball with your thumb. Fill the dimple with a teaspoon of coconut halwa(fudge) or with chocolate chips. Cover the hole with dough from the sides; roll into smooth round ball. Prepare all the dough balls like this and keep them ready for deep-frying.

4. Meanwhile prepare sugar syrup. Take sugar and water in a big pot. Bring to a boil. Let simmer for few minutes (5 to 10 minutes maximum on medium heat). Have a taste and add more sugar if needed. This is just plain sugar syrup, do not thicken the syrup and do not cook it for longer period. Just before turning off the heat, stir in rose water and cardamom powder.

Deep Frying the Jamuns

5. Heat oil in a kadai or in a saucepan. Deep-fry the jamuns until golden on medium-low heat. One tip is, keep the heat medium and do not overheat the oil. Deep-fry the jamuns, slowly. The color changes from light gold to much deeper color gradually within 3 to 4 minutes. If the colour changes to brown immediately after dropping into oil, it is a signal that the oil is too hot. In that case, reduce the heat or turn off the heat for few minutes. You need to cook these slowly on moderate heat because the dough should get cooked evenly inside also.

6. Remove the jamuns and place them on a paper towel to dry off any oil that’s attached to them. Quickly and gently drop them into sugar syrup. Take care not to spill the oil into sugar syrup.

7. Keep them soaked in syrup for about 15 to 30 minutes. Jamuns will absorb the syrup and will increase in size a little bit. I would like to serve gulab jamuns cold, so usually, I keep them in the refrigerator for one hour before serving.

Sweet Potato Gulab Jamuns (Ranga Alur Puli) ~ For this week’s “Indian Sweets 101“
They tasted great, just like I’ve imagined, particularly the coconut halwa filled ones (shown above) and the ones filled with butterscotch chips.

This is my contribution to “Blog Party – Bite Sized Desserts” hosted by dear Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness.

Sweet, flavorful and chewy, coconut burfi is one of my favorite sweets. Fresh coconut meat cooked in cardamom flavored sugar syrup – recipe is so simple, method is very easy and the taste is heavenly. We, in our family prepare it without adding milk in contrast to some other versions, where milk and ghee are also added along with fresh coconut to sugar syrup.

Last weekend, weather was so perfect and spring like. We felt like having some sweet. So we went to neighborhood Rulli Brothers grocery shop and purchased two coconuts, each for about 79 cents. Came home, prepared the sweet and enjoyed it. We still have some pieces of burfi left but the spring like weather – gayab ho gaya (disappeared). It’s snowing here today!

Recipe:
(For 12 medium sized squares)

2 cups of fresh grated coconut
1½ cups of sugar (or 2 cups – your choice)
Half glass of water
2 cardamom pods, seeds finely powdered
A tray greased with ghee (for pouring the cooked mixture)

Method:
In a big sturdy vessel take water and sugar. Keep the heat on medium-low allowing the sugar to melt completely to prepare the sugar syrup. Cook it until the sugar syrup reaches softball like consistency. To know the right consistency – do the cold water candy test. Take few tablespoons of water in a cup, add a drop of sugar syrup to water. If it holds its shape (softball) doesn’t dissolve into water then it’s at the right consistency.

Fresh Grated Coconut ………………Sugar Syrup on the way to softball stage

Fresh coconut is added to the thickened sugar syrup…… Coconut burfi – pressed into a squarepan to cool

Add the grated coconut and cardamom powder to the sugar syrup. Keep the heat on medium and cook, stirring frequently to prevent the mixture from sticking to the pan. In 10 to 15 minutes, the mixture will be reduced to half, becomes very thick and comes away easily from the sides of pan – this is the signal to turnoff the heat. (At this stage, you’ve to be fast and alert, otherwise, the mixture will be overcooked and turns into dry sweetened coconut flakes – commercial kind of mixture.) Immediately pour this mixture into the greased tray. Level it evenly with a spatula, and cut into squares. Let cool.

To serve or store, reverse the tray onto a big plate, separate the squares and store them in an airtight container. Because it doesn’t have any milk products, this sweet can stay fresh up to two weeks.

Kitchen notes:
Authentic South Indian coconut burfi is prepared only with fresh grated coconut. Grating the coconut takes little bit effort but I think of it as an exercise, mainly upperarm workout.
Checkout this site for clear photo and video demonstration of sugarsyrup stages.

Indian Sweets 101 – Celebrating Holi with Coconut Burfi

Recipe Source:Amma

When I invited my friends to celebrate Sankranthi festival, in addition to the traditional ‘sweet pongal’, I also prepared cashew walnut laddu. Low in sugar calories, high in nut energy! Cashews and walnuts are first roasted and powdered, then cooked in milk-sugar kova till they all came together into solid fudge like consistency. Cooling further solidifies the mixture and then small portions are taken and shaped into rounds -‘laddus‘ or cut into squares-‘burfis‘. I like the round shape, so I always go with round laddus. Very convenient to hold and eat, children particularly love laddus.

Recipe:

Half gallon- Whole milk
2 cups-sugar (3 cups if you like the laddus on the sweeter side)
1 cup – cashews
1 cup – walnuts

Preparation:

Milk and Sugar: In a thick bottomed big pot, bring milk to boil. Add sugar. Stirring occasionally, simmer the milk-sugar mixture until it gets thick and is reduced to about one fourths of the original quantity. It takes at least 45 minutes to one hour.:) Do this on medium heat. Avoid high heat and take care not to scald the milk.

Cashews and Walnuts: Meanwhile, lightly roast cashews and walnuts separately in an iron skillet. Let them cool down to room temperature. Separate 10 pieces from each and chop them into small pieces. With the remaining ones – make fine powder of them in a food processor/mixer.

Milk and sugar simmering………………..Thickened milk and sugar kova after one hour on the stove

Kova into Laddu: Add this fine powder to the thickened milk-sugar kova and cook for 15 minutes, stirring continuously, until the mixture is firm. Sprinkle chopped chunks of cashews and walnuts that were kept aside. Continue cooking for another 10 minutes until the mixture is almost crumbly and comes away easily from the sides of pan.

Take a spoonful of mixture and press it with your hands into a ball. If it holds shape, then mixture is ready for cooling. Turn off the heat. Spoon the mixture into a greased square or round pan. Level it with a spatula and let it cool for at least 4 to 5 hours. Cut into squares for burfis or take a spoonful of mixture, shape it with your hands into a round ball for laddus. Store the laddus in glass jar. They will stay fresh for upto one week.

(This recipe makes 15 medium sized laddus.)

One medium sized cashew-walnut laddu, my entry to ‘Sugar-Low Friday’ event hosted by lovely Sam of Beck & Posh.

By the time my friends left, I had only four laddus remaining out of 20. Two for me and two for Vijay, enough for us. This is how I do my ‘Sugar – Low’, by portion control. In my view, this is also one of the ways to lower the sugar consumption.

Tagged with: SHF # 15

Vijay got a good grade in this semester. He is studying for his master’s degree in software engineering, part time at Carnegie Mellon University. And the walnut burfi is for celebration. The combination of walnuts and milk-sugar is a classic. The resulting walnut burfi or laddu is a rare indulgence for us.

Recipe:
(makes about 6 medium sized laddus)

2 cups of walnuts (Akhrots)
2 cups of whole milk
3/4 cup of sugar

Lightly roast walnuts in an iron skillet and let them cool down. Keep one fistful of nuts aside and grind the remaining walnuts into powder.

Boil milk and sugar until they come together into very thick mass almost like the final stages of pala kova. It takes about 30 minutes. At this stage, stir in powdered walnuts. Mix thoroughly and keep stirring until, the walnut-kova mixture leaves the sides of the pan and comes together into one big lump. Takes about 10 to 15 minutes. Sprinkle the whole walnuts and mix once and remove the mixture into a pan. Allow it to cool and make small laddus with it or press the whole mixture evenly and tightly in a greased pan to cut squares.

Walnut burfi (Akhrot laddu) – Old fashioned

Stephanie’s beautiful fruit tart inspired me to make one myself. Also I saw this month’s SHF theme was tarts and that gave me the final push I needed.

I used a store bought lard-free pie shell as base for fruits. Did I say that this was my first time making tart, may be next time I might make my own tart shell. For now, this will do. For filling, I went with toasted walnuts and fresh fruits – ripe mango, strawberries, plums, cherries and cantaloupe.

Baked the pie shell in the oven for 15 minutes as per instructions on the cover of the pie shell package. Meanwhile I started to cut the ripe fruits in different shapes needed for my tart. With all the remaining scraps of fruit, I made jam/jelly, just like that. I added 6 tablespoons of brown sugar and watched the fruit bits turn into bright, colorful mush on high heat. I let it cool, stored half of it as jam and to the remaining half, I added half a cup of toasted walnuts and pureed them together to a smooth paste. This was my tart filler.

After filling the tart shell with the fruit-walnut puree, I arranged cut mangos, strawberries, plums, cherries and cantaloupe in order and refrigerated the tart for about one hour. Ta da… check the photo of fruit tart below, isn’t it colorful and pretty?

What a quick and easy recipe, but it gives the impression as if it took hours to prepare. We shared this delicious fruit tart with our next-door neighbor to congratulate on her new job.

My maiden attempt at fruit tart was a delightful success. I will definitely make many more.

This weekend, I prepared a carrot cake and walnut-coconut caramel for weekend barbecue party at our friend’s house. Last month, they added a big deck to their house and also bought a new gas grill. It is a sort of opening party for the new deck and grill.

I initially started making the carrot cake, then I remembered my pregnant friend who had just passed very difficult first 3 months, when she couldn’t eat anything because of high case of nausea. I thought walnut-coconut toffee is the best in-between meals snack for her now. Just like that, I made the caramel toffee. I also used some of it as topping or dressing for the carrot cake. The cake was a big hit with the children. They loved it and one curious kid asked me why I made the caramel instead of cream cheese topping. I Knew caramel is unusual topping for carrot cake and told him that I was just trying something different. He told me that he loved caramel and he served himself a big piece. 🙂

Walnut-Coconut Caramel Toffee:

• 1-cup light brown sugar
  1/2 cup melted ghee
  1/2 cup toasted walnuts, finely chopped
  1/2 cup dry unsweetened coconut flakes
  1/2 can of 5 oz of Nestle evaporated milk

Preparation:

Combine ghee, brown sugar and evaporated milk in a thick-bottomed vessel. Cook them stirring occasionally until they reach the softball stage. Now add walnuts and coconut flakes, stir them until well coated or for about 2 to 3 minutes. Pour them into a greased flat dish, refrigerate until set. Cut into small squares and wrap them individually in wax paper.

I can never make this type of sweet for us. We don’t do enough work to spend the extra calories. But for a special friend in her special condition- they are prefect treats.

Coconut, saffron and ghee- the auspicious things in my cooking world, by adding the cashews, cardamom, golden raisins, sugar and sabudana, cooking them together, I just made a classic, delicious Indian sweet. Traditionally, it is prepared in liquid form (payasam), but I wanted to try something new and made it in pudding form. This light and luscious, very easy to prepare dessert is perfect on warm humid days like the ones we are having this past week.

Recipe:

• 1 cup sabudana(sago) soaked in half cup coconut milk or milk for 3 to 4 hours
  1/2 cup sugar
  1/4 cup cashews and golden raisins lightly roasted in 2 tsps of ghee
  1 tsp of cardamom powder, 4tsps of ghee
  Few strands of saffron soaked in water

Preparation:

In a big saucepan, empty the soaked sabudana along with coconut milk, add another half cup of water or milk and sugar. Combine and cook them on medium heat, stirring to prevent the formation of the lumps until the sabudana turn translucent. Reduce the heat, add and stir – ghee, cashews, golden raisins, saffron water and cardamom powder. Let it simmer until the whole thing reaches the consistency of thick flowing magma. Turn off the heat, pour the mixture into jello molds or small cups and freeze them for 1 to 2 hours. The pudding can be removed from the cups by easing the sides off with a knife.

Serve them in different sweet sauces, your choice. I pureed ripe mango without adding sugar, added it as sauce to the pudding.

Sabudana (Sago) Pudding in Sweet Mango Sauce

We had a three day holiday for Memorial Day, and this is how we spent the weekend:

Saturday- shopping, cleaning the house, preparing dinner with my husband Vijay’s help. Our Nandyala family friend and his college friends came all the way from Milwaukee. They made a pit stop at our house before reaching their final destination – SV temple, Pittsburgh.

For dinner, we prepared puri, rice, chana masala, chicken kurma, Boiled eggs sautéed in red chilli-garlic powder, peanut chutney, sambhar, papads, raita with yogurt, and for dessert banana-walnut cake and fruit (cantaloupe). It was so hectic; I couldn’t find time to take pictures of preparation and finished items.

Sunday- helped our friends who came here from India just one month back, move to Detroit. Packing, cleaning etc. Baked again another banana-walnut cake for them. Managed to take some pictures of cake.

Monday- We have planned to go to Pittsburgh for diva darshanam at the SV temple. But it was raining so hard, and I didn’t want to travel on the PA Turnpike, which is notorious for accidents. So instead we hit some local shops nearby, and dined out.

First long weekend of summer was over just like that.

Banana-Walnut cake

As much as possible, I try to avoid using eggs in my baking for cakes etc. Because I don’t like the strong chemical smell of egg yolks. It wasn’t like that back in India, but after coming here, the yolk smell and taste has started to make me very ill. I don’t know what they feed the hens here in US, the fertilizer smell of egg yolks is unbearable, and the taste, oy…awful to say the least.

I found out that very ripe bananas are good substitute for eggs, so I use them often in my cake and bread making.

1 cup Bisquick pancake flour. All-purpose flour works fine too. (The only reason I made the cake with Bisquick is because I wanted to finish off the big packet of Bisquick pancake flour that I purchased at Costco last year.)
1/2 cup – walnuts, chopped
1 banana, skin peeled, and ripe fruit mashed smoothly
1/4 cup – sugar
4 tablespoons – oil or ghee
1 tsp each, – baking powder and vanilla extract
Milk if needed

You must be familiar with the baking drill. Wet first, dry next, and then combine the two together.

IN a big bowl, mix the wet ingredients – banana, oil and vanilla extract. Whisk to combine well.
Then add the flour, sugar, walnuts and baking powder. Combine thoroughly. If the batter looks tight, then add about quarter cup of water or milk.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Prepare the cake pan, by applying ghee or oil on the bottom and to the sides. Pour the cake batter. Spread evenly. Bake at 350° F for about 30 to 45 minutes. When a toothpick inserted into the baked cake, it should come out clean. Cool and then cut pieces. Enjoy.

Light and Fluffy, Almost Egg-less, Good Tasting Banana-Walnut Cake