Ghee - from homemade Butter

larified butter or ghee is used extensively in India and other South Asian cuisines. Also, practically any Hindu religious ritual is incomplete without the use of ghee. It has a lovely rich and nutty flavor, and enhances the flavor and taste of anything that it is added to. Ghee, as the English version of its name 'clarified-butter' suggests, is prepared from butter. How is butter made? Well, from cream; and cream is made from milk. In this post, I pick it up from store-bought cream and make my own butter and then turn it magically into ghee! You can choose to pick up directly from butter or if you are a little more adventurous than me (like my mom is), then you might as well pick up from milk and gather your own cream. Back in India my mom always prepares Ghee from scratch. She used to collect the cream daily off the milk brought by the doodhwallahs/door-to-door milk vendors, until the container with cream was full and ready to be made into Ghee.

The process behind it is quite magical (scientific for those who understand how these things work chemically). As you churn it with a whisk, cream which otherwise is a runny liquid, changes to a frothy texture. This happens rather quickly, what we popularly know as whipped cream. Now if you be patient and keep at it, after enough whisking, the buttermilk separates from the cream and behold you have butter!

Unsalted butter is slowly brought to a boil upon which the milk solids separate from the clarified butter.

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Mawa Pistachio Saffron Mini Bundt Cake - an eggless recipe

ne afternoon when I was sitting around thinking what I could cook up next, my baking genes started to flare up. The obvious question was what to bake. As I sat there and thought, I basically kicked myself for not having thought about the most common form of cake that I ate and made growing up - a cake with Indian flavors.

I remember back at home when I first started learning to bake anything, I tried to make a cake in one of those small counter-top electric ovens. It was a recipe that everyone in my extended family used when they had to make a cake! Nothing extraordinary, just your basic cake but kicked up several notches by adding key Indian flavors like mawa and nuts. That made the cake almost a cross between a cake and an Indian sweet dish.

Having baked several different kinds of breads and cakes, I decided to put a little twist on the classic recipe by adding pistachios and cardamom. Moreover, I believe this made the cake a bit more exotic, perfect for the upcoming occasion of the festival of Holi. 

So here is the recipe for this fabulous fusion cake. Also, if mawa is difficult to find where you live, I have also detailed a couple of easy ways of making your own mawa at home. The use of mini bundt pan is optional. You can use any cake pan, I just thought they looked cute and were handy to serve to my little princess.

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Gud aur til ka Paratha / Jaggery and sesame stuffed flatbread

My mom is a queen of innovation. Especially when it comes to innovation with leftovers. She would come up with cool ideas to convert things that everyone deemed throwaway into dishes that would fly like hot cakes.

In India it is tradition to take some sweets if you are visiting a near and dear. My mom being quite the entertainer, we used to have a rather busy guest 'traffic'. Now not everyone has a big heart to take the best quality stuff so quite often we would wind up with sweets that no one wanted to eat. This one time mom came up with the idea of mixing it all up, boiled it in some milk to make a thick filling and made stuffed parathas out of it. Papa and my brother ate them up in seconds.

This dish is another such example of my mother's innovativeness. After the festival of Sankranti, we would usually have lots of left over 'tilkut' (a sweet candy made of sesame and sugar). She used a similar technique on the tilkut to convert it into absolutely fabulous sweet stuffed bread. I wanted to give this a shot but unfortunately I couldn't find any tilkut here. I had some sesame seeds handy and some jaggery so I used them together to create the tilkut effect. Hubby loved it :)  So here's another one inspired from and for my dear mom.

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Litti and a Century!

After what seems to be time that went by in a flash, here I am with my 100th post. Co-incidentally today happens to be exactly four months from when I posted my first recipe. Through the thrill of receiving the first comment, the sense of achievement of getting a complex traditional recipe right, the joy of making great new friends, the sense of humility when someone tried out a recipe and it turned out great, learning great new recipes from all my awesome fellow bloggers, the occasional anonymous visitor that likes a dish and makes your day, it has been out and out an joy-ride.
Hubby deserves a special mention. He is the one who keeps the show going between tasting my dishes, taking awesome pictures and being my 24 x 7 technical support :) Thanking him would actually diminish the value that he adds to my efforts.
Now to the dish itself. When you think Bihari cuisine, Litti is arguably the first dish that comes to mind. Having its roots deep in Bihari culture, the humble litti has come to gain global popularity. It is basically a crispy roasted dough ball stuffed with a spicy tangy filling made of Sattu. Sattu is a flour made of roasted grams or chana. Mainly popular in Bihar and UP regions of India. It is often considered as a very low budget and nutritious meal full of fiber and protein. It is a favorite and staple at almost all bihari homes. Litti traditionally served dipped in ghee with a side of either aloo/baigna chokha or tomato chutney.
One memory which is strongly attached to this dish is whenever we used to go to our grandparents' place. Imagine littis and chokha made of potatoes and eggplant fresh from your farm, all roasted in your backyard on a cool winter evening over an open coal fire. Can you smell it yet!  What made it more fun was making the event like a picnic with all my cousins and having a ball of a time. Our Daadi whom I fondly used to call 'Maa' would be the ring leader driving us all.
Time has since flown, I miss grandma now but even today when I sit in my patio on a cold rainy evening, I still sometimes can smell the aroma of those littis roasting on that open coal fire...
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Kesar Nankhatai/Indian Cookies

This is my papa's absolute favorite thing in the world. Since his childhood, as he tells me. You give him a whole pack with his evening tea and you could forget about having any leftovers. I remember in my hometown there was a small bakery where they used to make these. The men would then pack them and sell them door to door on a bicycle. They would especially show up on Sundays knowing most people would be home, as was Papa. Once the bicycle bell rang he would call him and and get 2-3 packets. You could see the twinkle in his eye as he ate them with his tea. It was one of the very few store bought things he likes! Whenever I make them here... I  miss him.. these are for you papa... will make a big batch next time you visit :)
These are Indian version of cookies, eggless light and melt in mouth kind, often flavored with cardamom. I personally find them very cute, a delight to bake. I especially love watching them bake especially when they puff up and gently crack on top making it the best and perfect nankhatais. This batch that I made I wanted to experiment with the flavor of Saffron. Hubby said he absolutely loved the light saffron flavor and that it have it a nice festive appeal.

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Daal- baati

This is one of my mom's most amazing dishes and is the most sought after by family and friends alike. She has made this dish for as long as I can remember. She has even gotten compliments from some guests who were even the natives of that state to which this dish belongs.
Daal baati is a very popular dish from the state of Rajasthan, a wholesome power packed delicious meal. Dal, or lentil curry, is made of several kind of lentils which are cooked along with the masalas to make a tasty dal or curry. Baati, a rounded ball of dough that's baked in a charcoal fire or oven. Baati is made out of wheat, gram flour, millet or a mix of maize flour served dunked in the delicious daal with loads of ghee, tastes heavenly mouthwatering!
Mom did tweak the original recipe a little. The original recipe does not have veggies in the daal and the baati is made with plain flour. The addition of veggies, I believe, makes an already great daal even better. Addition of spices in the baati flour makes it even tastier. Mom used to make it on a gas grill. My touch to this is just to make it in a regular oven. It is not as high on the list of favorites on hubby's list so I do not come around to make this dish very often. Guess I could not wait any more :)
I got a few recipes from my mom written down in a notebook that I brought with me to the US after I got married. It is hands-down the best cookbook among tons of others that I own. I had this one bookmarked in the notebook for a real long time and only finally got around to it. From hubby's reaction it appears it climbed up a few steps in his charts :)
Don't be deterred by the long list of ingredients. You find most in a typical indian spice rack. Once you have them together, the method is really simple.
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Corn Fenugreek Pulao

I typically avoid elaborate cooking over weekends and always prefer one pot meals. One pot meals with rice is usually the most convenient. So here is the rice pulao I made this weekend using corn and my all time favorite methi (fenugreek) leaves. It tasted great... simple homey, aromatic and flavorful. The slight bitterness of methi, sweetness from the corn cooked with rice and spices. I know I am going to make it often!

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