Urad Dal Laddu

Diwali is a time when I try Indian sweets!! As you all know I am a baker at heart and do not like the no-baking sweets so much since most of them are laden with ghee or are fried.

But during Diwali I let go of all my calorie consciousness and gorge on all the yummy sweets!! Once a year I guess its okay to indulge!!

This year I was contemplating on what sweet to make. Last year I started this blog with the oh-so-sweet Rasgulla and it started my journey in blogosphere. This year I wanted to do something different.

I finalized on two interesting recipes that I had never tried before. And I must say they were quite a success with my family.

One of them is the Urad Dal Laddu. My MIL says that this laddu is traditionally made and consumed during the winter season. Since Diwali marks the onset of Winter I thought there can't be a better choice.

Urad Dal is considered a highly nutricious among lentils and is used in combination with rice to prepare a variety of breakfast dishes like dosa, idli etc. But this recipe breaks the barrier of this lentil into the dessert arena :)

It is an easy to make yet yummy mithai to adorn your Puja Thali..So here goes the recipe!

You will need:

1. 2 Cups of White Lentil/ Urad Dal(split and dehusked)
2. Fistful of Rice
3. 1 1/2 cup of sugar (Powdered)
4. 1/2 cup Ghee
5. 1/2 cup of Cashews (broken)
6. 1/2 cup of Raisins

Method:

• Dry Roast the Urad Dal and the Rice till the Dal is medium brown. You can see the raosted Dal in the photo below.

• Now cool this mixture in a plate and grind this into consistency that is not fine but not coarse. Probably like of chiroti sooji or fine semolina consistency.
• Now take little bit of the ghee in a pan and once the ghee is hot add the broken cashews and the raisins and fry till they are brown.
• Switch off the gas and remove the cashew and raisins from the pan into a plate. You may coarsely grind this so it can incorporated into the laddu easily.
• Now in this pan add the urad dal and rice mixture. Add the powdered sugar and the rest of the ghee.
• Finally add the cashews and raisins and mix well with hand.
• Try taking fistful of this mixture and test if you can make a round ball out of it.
• If you can then make laddus of the same size. If you can't you may need to add some more ghee.
• Once all the laddus are done you need to store it in air tight containers for them to last for a long time. Enjoy!!

This is my first time making laddus with help from my MIL of course who has the patience to answer all my crazy questions and thanks to her I guess I have to a certain extent mastered the trick to make laddus!

Modak - Food of Gods

Today we celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi or Chavati with great love and devotion towards the most intellectual of Gods among the Hindu Gods and Godesses.

Now everyone makes different types of sweets to entice him and each part of India has a special sweetmeat made for him. For he is supposed to be one great foodie among all the gods :)

As kids we used to wait for this day and would enjoy it thouroughly and feast on all the delicacies made by our aunts and grandmas.

In Western India there are mainly two sweets prepared as an offering. One bieng Appo and the other being Modak.

Appo is more like the Indian version of the Danish Æbleskiver made with Wheat Flour, Jaggery, Coconut and Cardomom. I will post the recipe to make this soon. Oh! there is a savoury version of this Appo too but that is made for breakfast and not for offering.

I usually prepare Modak as offering. So that is the story behind this blog post.

Now there many different variants for preparing modak. One is the steamed version prepared with rice flour and the other is the deep fried version which is what I made this time.

The ingredients are as follows:

• Wheat Flour - 1 1/2 Cup
• Chiroti Sooji (Semolina) - 1/2 Cup
• Grated Coconut - 1 cup
• Jaggery - 3/4 Cup
• Cardomom - 1 pod powdered
• Clarified Butter or Ghee - 1 tbsp
• Water - 1/2 cup
• Cashewnuts -5-6
• Raisins -10-12
• Oil for frying

Method:

1. Mix the Wheat Flour and the Semolina along with water and make a stiff dough.
2. Add some oil to this and knead till it is pliable dough. Set aside.
3. Now take the Ghee in a wok and one it is how add the coconut, Jaggery and the cardomom mixture to this and fry till the jaggery melts.
4. This may take a while. Once done add the broken cashewnuts and raisins and mix well.
5. Turn off the heat and let this mixture cool.
6. Now take a small portion of the dough and roll it into a poori. Basically you need to get the round shape which will fit in your palm.
7. Take a little bit of the coconut mixture and keep it right in the middle and now seal the ends by pulling the edges towards you. The photograph above may help you decipher that.
8. Once done you will need to take oil in a wok and once the oil is hot enough fry these modaks in oil till they are light brown.
9. Modaks are ready to be served or offered.

P.S:

Kids really love this. Try it ;-)

Rasgulla

Diwali is a time when I usually make (try to make :) ) some kinds of indian sweets for my family. Every year I think of different types of sweets that can be made from scratch. I remember a couple of years back when I asked my cook (who used to work in a restaurant earlier) to teach me how to make rasgullas. He told that he could make it easily. I got all the ingredients and he started making them. A couple of hours later I realised that I made a mistake by asking him. It was disastrous. All the curdeled Paneer was totally wasted in his effort to make rasgullas since he tried to put baking soda to make it fluffier. forget the fluff all the paneer balls disintegrated into the sugar syrup in no time and the whole thing was unrecognizable. I thought my dream of making rasgullas from scratch will remain a dream. Till the day one of my sis-in-law told me this "easy to do" recipe that can never go wrong. So hear it goes.

Ingredients:

• 1 ltr Toned Milk


• 2 cups Sugar


• 6 cups Water


• 1 tbsp Maida


• 1 Lemon


• Few drops of Rose Water


• Few strips of saffron

Method:
Boil the milk and remove the first layer of cream that forms after the milk is boiled and cooled for 5-10 minutes.

Now switch on the gas simmer the milk. Add the juice of 1 lemon and stir the milk till the milk starts to curdle.

If the milk does not curdle add some more lemon juice.

After the milk is curdled completely strain the milk onto a muslin cloth and tie it on the water pipe of your kitchen sink for the next two hours.

After 2hrs take the muslin cloth with the paneer and keep it on a flat base like the kitchen countertop. Now keep a 5 ltr cooker filled with water on top of this for the next 25 minutes.

After 25 minutes take the paneer out and start kneading it well till the ghee starts seperating. Now take 1 tbsp (not heaped but flat) of maida and add it to this paneer and knead it for some more time.

Make small lemon sized balls of paneer. Now take a cooker and pour 6 glasses of water into it. Switch on the gas and put the cooker with water on boil. Add two cups of sugar to this mixture.

When the water is boiled and the sugar is all l=melted add a few drops of Rose water and some kesar water into the mixture.

Now simmer the flame and drop all the paneer balls carefully into the sugar syrup.
Close the lid (with the whistel) and allow it to simmer for the nexxt 7 minutes. Ensure that the pressure within the cooker is not so much that it starts whistling when you close the lid.

After 7 minutes have passed switch off the flame and allow the rasgullas to remain in the cooker till all the pressure is down.

Once cooled remove the rasgullas onto a bowl along with the sugar syrup and refrigerate it immediately.

P.S: Use the cooker which has the lid that closes from inside for better results.