Ipsita Banerjee's Blog, page 8

J: Jelly #AtoZChallenge

Ah, jelly. When we were very young, those jelly packets were hard to come by in India. My aunt who stayed in Sunderland used to bring them for us. the one she got wasn't like the powdered gelatin and flavour mix you get these days, it was a wobbly concentrated chunk that came in squares and looked much like a small waffle. Anyone remember those? I do not know if those are still available, but they used to come in amazing flavours like black-currant and black cherry and raspberry and used to be delicious. I often stole the cubes, (much to my mother's chagrin) and could not wait for it to be "cooked" (as in melted and set). Yes, jellies were always a favourite and my daughters love them too. I remember every birthday party they had as kids used to see me making piles of jellies for them and their friends. Nowadays they make their own jelly (from packets) and sometimes set it in the ice tray so they have little cubes of jelly to have! The other day my sister-in-law was making jelly for her two year old twins and that's what I told her too do! Here's to the wobbly dessert loved by the kids, add some fruits (except pineapple because there's something in it that prevents gelatin from setting), have it with custard or icecream, make it into a trifle...whatever. Jelly always disappears fast in our house! 

I: Ice-lollies #AtoZChallenge

No matter how old I get, on a hot summer's day in Calcutta, one of the few things that I love to have are ice-lollies. Remember the orange lollies in school that left an orange stain on our uniforms and our tongues? Yes, that. And also the Bombay Chowpatty style lollies made of crushed ice stuffed into a glass with a stick and then covered with syrup? That too. 
I tried to make them at home when I was young. We used to have trays of orange squash (with a little sugar, otherwise it will not freeze nicely) and odd bowls and glasses with old ice-cream sticks in them sitting in the fridge. My mother used to be complaining that half the kitchen napkins were ruined because I was forever making crushed ice (I would put the ice cubes in the cloth and hammer away at it with a pestle!)  and making a mess! In fact, during our holidays, on hot summer afternoons, when the rest of the house was sleeping, ice-lollies provided a lot of fun, pleasure and entertainment as far as I was concerned!
I remember in Ranchi, my grandmother used to cut up watermelon, sprinkle a teeny bit of sugar on it and freeze. It was one of the most awesome things ever; fresh, natural and delicious. And that is still my favourite way to have watermelon.  
It's 37 degrees Centigrade here today, right now. My cellphone tells me the real feel is 44 degrees. Time for an ice-lolly, don't you think? 

H: Honey #AtoZChallenge

My mother was from Ranchi, so as a child we spent a lot of our time in Ranchi. My grandparents had a lovely house in Kanke, a little outside the main town and the grounds were big enough for us to get lost in all throughout the day. There were all kinds of trees: litchi, tamarind, black jamuns, guava, papya... you name it. There even was a well which we were forbidden to go near. I remember many many happy unstructured hours playing in the fields. There was a river nearby that we would visit in the afternoons and there were n number of neighbours whose houses we would run to and who would always welcome us with orange squash and fresh fruits from their trees. And yes, there were flowers, there were bees and often beehives hanging off the trees. In fact I remember the first time I saw an apiary. It was at a corner of the neighbour's garden and there was a man with heavy gloves extracting the honey. It was fascinating, all the more because we were strictly ordered to stay away. And later on the neighbours sent us jars of fresh golden honey. My grandmother used to make the most amazing pancakes. She called them pancakes and that's what I grew up thinking they were but now I know that what she made were actually crepes. We used to love them. We had no Nutella or fancy sauces, but had it with sugar and fresh lime. It was lovely. And we had the fresh honey. In fact another favourite dessert of mine as a child used to be a slice of fresh bread lathered with home made white butter and honey dripping off the sides. I can still taste it even as I write this. 
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And that is me with my grandparents with the Ranchi house in the background. This picture would be early 1971, I guess! 

H: Honey

My mother was from Ranchi, so as a child we spent a lot of our time in Ranchi. My grandparents had a lovely house in Kanke, a little outside the main town and the grounds were big enough for us to get lost in all throughout the day. There were all kinds of trees: litchi, tamarind, black jamuns, guava, papya... you name it. There even was a well which we were forbidden to go near. I remember many many happy unstructured hours playing in the fields. There was a river nearby that we would visit in the afternoons and there were n number of neighbours whose houses we would run to and who would always welcome us with orange squash and fresh fruits from their trees. And yes, there were flowers, there were bees and often beehives hanging off the trees. In fact I remember the first time I saw an apiary. It was at a corner of the neighbour's garden and there was a man with heavy gloves extracting the honey. It was fascinating, all the more because we were strictly ordered to stay away. And later on the neighbours sent us jars of fresh golden honey. My grandmother used to make the most amazing pancakes. She called them pancakes and that's what I grew up thinking they were but now I know that what she made were actually crepes. We used to love them. We had no Nutella or fancy sauces, but had it with sugar and fresh lime. It was lovely. And we had the fresh honey. In fact another favourite dessert of mine as a child used to be a slice of fresh bread lathered with home made white butter and honey dripping off the sides. I can still taste it even as I write this. 
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And that is me with my grandparents with the Ranchi house in the background. This picture would be early 1971, I guess! 

G: Gajar ka halwa #AtoZChallenge

Can a series on desserts ever be missing the gajar ka halwa? Impossible, I thought. Who could ever imagine that carrots could be so tasty. Yes, Gajar ka halwa is made out of carrots. My mother used the dark purple carrots (when they were available) in winter but it works just as well with the orange ones too.
One word of warning: It is rich! And time consuming if you have to make the Khoya (evaporated milk) at home like our mothers used to.

First, the khoya: 1.25 litres milk
1. Pour the milk in a large thick bottomed pan and bring milk to a boil.
2. Lower the flame and simmer the milk, stir at intervals whilst the milk is simmering.
3. The milk will froth many times, while it is simmering. Scrape the milk solids from the sides of the pan and add to the milk.
4. The milk will continue to reduce and thicken as its being simmered on a low flame.
5. Continue to simmer and stir till the milk thickens and has reduced to such an extent that you can see bubbles bursting in the reduced milk. keep stirring continuously as the reduced milk can burn or become too brown.
6. When the bubbles stop, switch off the flame and scrape the sides of the bowl and add it to the khoya. Let it cool.

This process will take about 2 hours.

Or, you can buy the khoya from a sweet shop. I know of someone who used milk powder instead of khoya. Please don't, it is NOT the same thing.

Once the khoya business is sorted, making gajar halwa is pretty simple!

You will need;

2 kg carrots (red or purple or orange)
500 ml cold milk (warm milk tends to curdle while cooking with carrot)
250 g khoya (the above recipe is for 250 g)
Sugar to taste
1 tbsp ghee


shred carrotsBoil the milk and shredded carrots togetherSimmer. When the carrots are halfway cooked, add sugar (about 3/4 tbsp, you can taste and see that it is to your liking) and ghee. Cook till the water from the milk dries completely, the carrots should be fully cooked. Simmer some more and add the khoya. If you wish, you can add a handful of raisins and cashew at the end. Serve hot.  

F: Fudge #AtoZChallenge

Ah, fudges. Walnut filled crunchy, chewy fudges. Again, my mom used to make them. In fact a lot of my cooking, recipes are from her. Anyway, come winter, our house would be filled with the aroma of cakes and baking.Mom was known for her Christmas cakes and roasts,
And sometimes, in winter, if she was in the mood for it, Mom also made chocolate fudge. In fact when I went away to college Mom sometimes made me some to take back with me. You can bet it barely lasted a day!

EASY WALNUT FUDGE:

Ingredients:

Cocoa powder 1/2 cupChopped walnuts: 1 cupCondensed milk: 1 cupButter: 1/2 cupSugar 2 tbspVanilla Essence: a few drops Method: Heat a non -stick pan, add condensed milk, butter, sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla essence and mix well. Cook on a medium flame for about 2/3 minutes, stirring continuously. Remove from flame, add walnuts and mix well. Transfer immediately onto a greased dish or tray. Once it cools a little, shape into balls or squares and set aside to cool completely. You may want to keep it in the refrigerator to set if it's too hot outside. Enjoy! 

E: Eclairs #AtoZChallenge

In March I decided I would do desserts as my theme for the A2Z Challenge this year. I was toying with the idea and ran it by my daughters. My older one, who is a self-styled sweet aficionado immediately perked up at the idea. "But you have to make at least one every weekend," she said, from that blog, all of April." I was game. Last weekend we had parfaits, more about that later (maybe). And this is what I plan to try this weekend! Eclairs!
Who can resist them? I got  a nice recipe here: Eclair recipe (http://nicelikenigella.com/2013/08/29... it looks simple enough to try! 
care to join me? 

D: Doi Bonde #AtoZChallenge

As a true blooded Bengali, how can I NOT have mishti doi in a food collection, specially when I am talking about desserts? That sweet (mishti) creamy yogurt (doi) is the stuff that dreams (and legends) are made of. And while I like it, I am a bit of a food snob. I will have it only from a certain couple of shops or not at all. Too sweet, I say.

But, I am NOT talking about mishti doi here. In fact I am talking about the unsweetened white yogurt you get in every sweet meat shop on every corner. And I am talking about bonde. (Pronounced bow-day. There's a nasal twang after the 'o', the n is silent.) Or 'boondi', if you will, only it has been dipped in sugar syrup!

When we were young every weekend saw us jazzing off to our garden house in North Calcutta. It was an old property with huge grounds and a pond and much of my childhood memories are centered here. It was built by my ancestors when Maniktala was outside the city. By the time we got to it, it was our own little slice of heaven in the middle of North Calcutta!  On our way to the place, or even the next day for breakfast, my dad would pick up kachoris and daal and samosas. And he would get bonde.

What is bonde, you ask? Well little balls of gram flour are fried in hot oil and steeped in sugar syrup. By little balls I mean tiny, about the size of small  peas. They usually use food colouring so the end result is a red and yellow bowl of tiny sweet balls. Like this:




I know, that does not sound very interesting and seems too sweet. At least it does to me.
But have it the way my father and my uncles have it. With sour yogurt.
The sourness of the yogurt off-sets the sweetness of the bonde beautifully. and suddenly, you find you want some more!!!

C: Chikkis #AtoZChallenge

On weekends, my Mom would make something nice for the family. Often, and I used to wait for them, it used to be peanut chikkis. What are chikkis, you ask? Chikkis are caramelized peanut squares. Sweet and sinful and crunchy. Only my Mom used to call the "badamer takti" or something equally tooth-breaking. It's only after I went to college in Pune that I discovered "chikkis". Lonavla was famous for them,  and they made it out of everything: almonds, cashews, chick-peas, pistachio, coconut... you name it. I tried them but they weren't quite the same. You see, they used jaggery or some other syrup. There were too many nuts and flavours...The best chikkis, in my humble opinion (of course) are the simple peanut ones that my mother used to make: a slice of  a Sunday afternoon at home. 
Here's a simple recipe: 
INGREDIENTS: 500 g peanuts400 g sugarButter: to grease a tray
METHOD: Skin, roast and coarsely crush peanuts. That means dry roast the peanuts, crush under a rolling pin, blow away the skin over the kitchen sink! Heat sugar with 1/2 to 3/4 cup water till thick. Boil syrup till it caramelizes into hard crack consistency (this means that the syrup will form thick, "ropy" threads as it drips from the spoon. The sugar concentration is rather high now, which means there’s less and less moisture in the sugar syrup. A little of this syrup dropped into cold water will form a hard ball. If you take the ball out of the water, it won’t flatten. The ball will be hard, but you can still change its shape by squashing it.Add peanuts and mix thoroughlyGrease a tray and spread the mixture on the trayRoll flat into 1 cm thicknessCut into squares and store in an air-tight container, they stay for a while unless you have hungry teenagers at home like I do! Go on, try it sometime, I promise you can't stop at one! 

B: Bacon Brownies #AtoZChallenge

Bacon Brownies

I got married in August 1996. In November, when my birthday rolled around and everyone was gifting me yet more saris, my mother-in-law got me an oven. She knew me well enough to know I liked cooking (I had told her about the roast chicken and lamb dinners at home). As you can imagine, it was the best gift ever. The best part was that it wasn't a small OTG which is present in many households and used even for toasting bread. It was a proper big sized oven that could not only hold a baking dish but could also accommodate a leg of ham!
It served me well for almost fifteen years, I had to replace it because one of the coils finally fell apart and could not be fixed. But the joys I have gotten baking and experimenting with that oven are forever.
I started with Brownies pretty early. It was fun and my nephew and niece loved them. My kids grew up licking the cake batter off the mixing bowl.
And then the other day I was going through my Twitter Time Line and came across Bacon Brownies WOW, I thought, that is something I haven't tried yet!
That very day I tried it out. I fried the bacon to a crisp, crumbled it, mixed in some honey and added it to the brownie mix. Viola, it was delicious. I do think bacon and chocolate go very well together.

And yes, the recipe is simple and easy to follow. Here you go, courtesy +Monika Manchanda

Heaven on a plate @Monikamanchanda