Beetroot Halwa

Halwa is one of the most popular traditional Indian dessert, made from rich and fresh ingredients by cooking in milk, simmering till it reduces along with clarified butter/ghee and adorned with nuts and raisins. They are rich in taste and flavors and can be served warm or cold. Various kinds of halwa can be made, depending on the ingredients they are prepared from. The commonly loved Gajar ka Halwa is best tasted warm with a dollop of ice-cream. My version with beetroot is no different.

The story goes this way. We had an over dose of beet roots a few weeks ago and I had to finish them off with hitting boredom or seeing them end up in the trash. A few stir fries and curries had already made us see enough of the fiery deep crimson red color that it's hang over would last for months! I used the final batch of 4 beetroots to make this halwa and it was worth every effort.

Beet is a popular tropical reddish purple rooted vegetable liked or disliked for it's odd color. I know many who don't like beets, don't cook them or even eat them. I guess it's probably due to it's intense color. I have less liking for it as a vegetable, but still cook them once a while. But this dessert is one which you shouldn't stop from giving a try. If you admire carrot halwa, then you will surely love these too. Except the color, there it isn't much different.

Here are a few tips that can help you. You can use canned condensed milk or khova for this recipe instead of reducing the milk over the stove. Low fat milk with few tbsp of milk powder would work equally good. Take care not to grate the beets too fine, they may dissolve while cooking. Squeeze as much juice as possible from the grated beet and use it to make red velvet cake.

Beetroot Halwa

INGREDIENTS

1/2 kg beetroot, grated
1/2 litre Milk
225 gm Sugar
1 tbsp clarified butter
1/2 tsp cardamom powder
Nuts and Raisins for garnish

DIRECTIONS

Wash and grate the beetroots. Sauté the beetroot on a pan till it softens a little, approximately for about 5 minutes. Add in the milk. It will bubble up as it boils. Cook on a gentle flame for about 20 minutes stirring every 5 minutes. Add in the sugar, stir well and cook till the sugar melts and dissolves well. Cook until all the milk is reduced and has been absorbed. It will result in a mushy mass. That's how we want it.

Add a tbsp of clarified butter/ghee and cook further for 2 minutes. Add in plump raisins and freshly crushed cardamom seeds.

Fry the cashew nuts in a tsp of ghee. When it turns golden, transfer it to the halwa. Set a few aside to garnish the halwa while serving. Serve warm.

My parents visited us the day I made this and they throughly enjoyed it. Warm servings of this halwa, freshly seasoned with cardamom and nuts made an exotic treat for all. A dollop of vanilla ice cream would elevate this dessert to a greater extent.

Do not leave the cardamom out. It has an impeccable luxurious flavor that it imparts to this dessert making it warm, rich and endearingly good. A single bite of this simple looking, yet rich, sweet and calorific dessert will leave you craving for more.

Note: Apologies readers! I shall take a month's break from blogging as I am tied with work and personal needs to cater to. But I promise I shall be back soon. Till then, happy reading and cooking! Chio!

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Mulberry & Cherry Verrine

Most of my desserts are a little low on sweetness. We love it that way, just with hints of sweetness, unless if it were a cake or mousse with no frosting. This is probably the reason why I love bittersweet dark chocolates with over 60-70% cocoa over the most loved milk chocolates. But my sensibilities do warn me that people in general adore high sugar levels in most sweetmeats, which I agree would be great considering it is actually how a dessert is meant to be. I try being considerate and adjust an extra helping of sugar if I have guests around, but I guess sometimes, that too runs on a lower range! Health is just a smaller part of the concern, while the primary reason is our palatable tastes.

I promised. I would be back with another dessert from Mulberries. Well, that was long ago ;) With many parts of the world celebrating the coveted spring and with summer fruits, berries and stone fruits showing major prominence on most blog spaces, I thought I shouldn't keep myself a step behind. So I had the perfect reason to bring out my mulberry compotes and pair them with fresh cherries and yogurt to layer my verrines.

A verrine is a well known French dessert which is made by layering ingredients in a small glass, generally in verrine glasses. It can be either sweet or savory. This one with Mulberries and Cherries is a healthy classic verrine with health from fruit compotes and goodness from yogurt. The yogurt impart a tangy twist. This verrine is mild on sweetness and goes great as a breakfast dessert.

Mulberry & Cherry Verrine

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup mulberry compote
1/2 cup cherries, chopped
1 cup hung yogurt
2 tbsp sugar

DIRECTIONS

Beat the thick hung yogurt with sugar. I used sugar free here. Layer the verrine glasses with mulberry compote. The compote I made had vanilla in it. You can add vanilla to the yogurt too. Top with some yogurt and freshly pitted chopped cherries. Top another layer with mulberry compote, some yogurt and freshly pitted chopped cherries.

Chill and serve for best flavors. Garnish with a few fresh cherries and mulberries before seving.

I love the entire process of creating and layering the verrines. Those verrine glasses are my all time favorites from the rack and I take immense care of them. I haven't done a neat job here to create the aesthetic look, but I loved those purple hues we get as we dig into our glasses. The thick yogurt and fruit alternating in it made it more a breakfast dessert, with a well balanced sweetness and tart.

To make a more exotic fruity dessert, substitute with cream cheese or sour cream. The varied mingled flavors that you can create with each verrine will surely leave you with a treat.

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TiLi Saar

I have almost recovered from my flu and weakness and I am in much better health today. I was a weak child, in sense of catching cold and flu virus since childhood. Running nose was so common with me, almost all the time. That followed with fever, blocked nose and continuous sneezes that would make me look no better than a circus clown with a naturally inflamed red nose! It was a nightmare that always made me feel guilty.

If someone sneezed meters away, I would have probably caught the virus within minutes. No joke! At a point, even my high school teachers, college lectures and friends had a tough tough time with me. One of my college lectures found it so disturbing in his classes, that my mother was summoned for complaints regarding my condition and proper introspection. Poor mom of mine had been dealing with all this for long. Blood tests said nothing, just high eosinophil count, a condition of allergy. And that allergy meant negativity towards almost everything. Changing weather, summers or winters, humidity, dust, rains, loud noise, headlights, sleep, food, etc, etc, etc. Allopathic medicines only gave temporary relief. In my opinion, no relief at all, just a suppression. Amphetamines, antihistamines yielded no solution. How much could one deal with it?

For times when I would often fall sick with common cold or fever, my mom would patiently extend herself to make treatments at home. She opinionated that conditions with common cold or fever could be dealt at home with care and did not require extensive allopathic medications. She always jokes "Allopathy medicines would take just a week to cure, while home remedy would take 7 long days to cure." We hardly went to doctors for such conditions. She would prepare different types of Kashayas, Fire roasted ginger roots, Jeshtmaddu roots and several other home remedies for cure. She took immense care on food too. Food on those days were light, focussed on easily digestible ones. Rasam, Saar, Tambli were very common with over cooked mushy rice, again to aid for ease in digestion.

Even today, she continues to follow the same principles and it works wonders. You bet, I can't be as efficient as her when it comes to remedies, but I make a sincere attempt to follow her during my bouts of common colds, flu and fever. Even as I am recovering now, I have been careful with food I am cooking. This TiLi Saar is one of my favorites and it makes presence on my dining table very often. Not just when I am sick and low, but for those days when simple home food can be the most comforting.

TiLi Saar

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup pigeon lentil/toor dal, over cooked
2 cups water
1 tbsp tamarind pulp
1 tsp sambar/rasam powder
1/2 tsp compounded asafeotida
1 tsp turmeric powder
Salt to taste

Tempering:

1 tsp clarified butter/pure ghee
1 tsp mustard seeds
A sprig of curry leaves
2 red chillies

Garnish:

Chopped coriander leaves

DIRECTIONS

Pressure cook the toor dal with water and turmeric powder for 15 min. Ensure the pigeon lentil/toor dal is over cooked so that it can be mashed well. Once cooked, mash the lentils, add the tamarind paste, sambar/rasam powder, 2 cups of water and the compounded asafeotida (hing). Bring this to a gentle boil. Add more water to make it thin.

Heat some clarified butter in a pan. Add a tsp of mustard seeds, a sprig of curry leaves and 2 red chillies. Fry till the mustard begins to splutter. Remove from heat and temper the prepared TiLi saar. Serve hot over steaming rice.

TiLi means light or runny, in sense watery. TiLi saar is basically similar to rasam and is popular in coastal parts of Karnataka. You can substitute half the tamarind to tomato puree and make Tomato saar. Tempering can be changed to add garlic flavors with pepper and cumin. Eaten commonly with a generous dollop of homemade ghee (clarified butter) over ganji, over cooked mushy rice, they can be the most comforting home food I can ask for.

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Hazelnut & White Chocolate Cookies

I have been unwell from a couple of days with constant cold, cough and high temperature. I was bedridden this weekend, yet trying not to miss out on Football World cup and finals of Wimbledon with weary watery eyes. While I am trying to recover and bounce back into life and action, cooking has taken a short backseat as I am depending on light and easily digestible food. And this one comes from my drafts.

I am posting this recipe for Hazelnut & White Chocolate Cookies which I made for our tea time a few weeks ago. The cookies were simple to make and since I had all the ingredients at hand, I didn't want to miss a try. They came out good, had crunchy edges and softer centres. I loved the crunch from hazelnut. White chocolates aren't my favorites, so they are mostly consumed this way. White chocolate flavor is not the highlight of these cookies, so if you love them, just increase the quantity. Or probably just use milk chocolate chips instead. Our perfect tea time cookies.

Hazelnut & White Chocolate Cookies

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup soft butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 egg, cold from the fridge
1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts
1/4 cup white chocolate, chopped

DIRECTIONS

Put the flour, chopped white chocolate, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a bowl. Cream the butter and sugars in another bowl. Beat in the vanilla extract and a cold egg, and then mix in the dry ingredients. Increase or decrease the quantity of egg depending on your cup size. Use egg sufficient to wet the ingredients and bring them together to form a soft dough.

Roll into balls, flatten them a little and place them on a lined baking sheet about an inch apart. Top with a broken hazelnut, if preferred.

Bake on 180 deg C for approximately 18 minutes or till the cookies are done. Transfer them to a cooling rack to harden as they cool.

Hazelnuts are not so common in India. They are mostly sourced as imported products. When I came across them on one of my shopping trips, I couldn't resist but grab a packet at a big price tag. The only form of hazelnuts that I have ever eaten were from Nutella. So we really loved them. Hazelnut compliments white chocolates very well, but my guess would be, they would make a heavenly combination with dark chocolates. No doubts, Nutella rocks!

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Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

The weekends always go by in a hush bush. By the time it's Friday and we rejoice over it, it's Monday again that comes by, as if in a blink of en eye. While we are in the middle of the week and I am buried with piles of workload, I look forward to those weekends with a difference. We have been eying at getting more adventurous. I guess it's a better way to put across than say healthy! ;) We finally got our most awaited bicycle, that too a 21 geared mountain bike B-twin and I am enjoying every moment with it.

Just a hunt for the perfect unisex mountain bike took a lot of our time and energy, but it was all fun. Hunted through many shops, mostly to find bicycles that cater to male needs than ease it for women on bikes. Heck! Especially if you are an Indian woman, short at height (that's anything below 5'5", and now don't get at guessing my height!), then you are in trouble for geared bikes! Hate that centre stem that makes it painfully difficult for female riders. After few heated discussions and a couple of hiccups, we made a final stop at Decathlon to take our perfect pick, the French branded B-twin. Getting hang of the gear system was a roller coaster and that didn't take long. Looking forward to an audacious bicycle trip!

Back home it was time to celebrate this with some fresh, home baked Double Chocolate Chip Cookies with inspiration drawn from Nigella's Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies from Nigella Bites. Yet another chocolate indulgence at it's best! I hardly changed the recipe, except the title! These are no doubt, the BEST chocolate cookies ever! The original recipe calls for huge amounts of chocolate chips which would lead me to chocolate coma, so I reduced hugely on that! I suggest you to try this recipe yourself and know how good it will do to you!

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

INGREDIENTS

60g dark chocolate
75g plain flour
15g cocoa, sieved
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
60g soft butter
38g light brown sugar
25g white sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 egg, cold from the fridge
90g dark chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Melt the dark chocolate either in the microwave or in a heatproof dish over a pan of simmering water.

Put the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a bowl. Cream the butter and sugars in another bowl. Add the melted chocolate and mix together. Beat in the vanilla extract and cold egg, and then mix in the dry ingredients. Finally stir in the chocolate chips.

Scoop out equal-sized mounds using an ice cream scoop and place them on a lined baking sheet about an inch apart.

Cook for approximately 18 minutes till the cookies are done. Transfer them to a cooling rack to harden as they cool.

You can get 6 large cookies or 12 small cookies out of these. I made them in 2 batches. The first half went into the oven, while the second half into the freezer. The first batch looked almost like what you see on Nigella's site. Absolutely decadent! Crusty and rock-like, yet deeply fudgy, just like a brownie. The moment I brought them out of the oven, they vanished quickly. My husband and me devoured almost 3 warm cookies each at a time! So none were left to be photographed.

I really wish I had saved atleast one of that batch for this space. The second batch which came out of the freezer could easily be rolled to a dough. I didn't see the need for an ice-cream scoop. I could easily roll them in between my palms and they went into baking again. The chocolate chips I used in these got melted away with the heat while baking. Unfortunately! Each bite came with the punch of bitter sweet dark chocolate and it was truly a decadent pleasure for the chocolate lover in me.

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