Skip to main content

Happy Diwali



The last few days, my drive back from work has been brighter than usual with buildings and malls all lit up. The markets are all full of people scrambling for last minute gifts. And any minute now, the air will get thick with smoke of firecrackers, the sky will light up with shooting stars. No wonder then, that Diwali is my favourite time of the year.

Our family has always bought rather than cooked diwali sweets so we don't really have a tradition of any special diwali dishes. This year though, I wanted to create a special dessert. I chose to take on my favourite jalebi. Typically, jalebi spirals are deep fried and then immediately dunked into sugar syrup, making them way too sweet. When I fried my jalebis though, I added a tiny bit of sugar into the dough itself so they were crisp and lightly sweet. And then I spooned over an orange caramel sauce, adding some citrusy goodness. There is more sauce to dunk your jalebis in if you want them sweeter. To round off the hot jalebi with something cold, there is rabdi ice cream in the middle.

Have a sweet, fun filled, happy diwali everyone!

Ingredients
For Jalebis
1 cup plain flour
2 tbsp cornflour
2 tbsp caster sugar
1/2 cup curd
oil for deep frying

For orange caramel sauce
1 cup caster sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
1/2 cup orange juice

For rabdi ice cream
1 litre full fat milk
50 grams sugar
8-10 pistachio nuts
5-6 almonds

Start your jalebi dough the night before you want to make them. In a bowl, combine all the ingredients (except oil of course) and whisk well until you have a thick batter. You might need to add a tbsp or so of water if your batter is too thick but make sure it's of dropping consistency like a pancake batter and not runny. Cover the bowl and set it aside to ferment. The next morning, you will see bubbles all over your batter. If you are not ready to make jalebis immediately, put the batter in the fridge so it doesn't over-ferment. It can also take longer, unto 24 hours in fact, depending on your weather, so be guided by how your batter looks and if there are bubbles to show it is fermented.

Let's get on to the ice cream now. Rabdi is nothing more than thickened milk and that's exactly how we have made this one. Pour the milk into a large, thick bottomed pan. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat, then cook until the milk is reduced to half, stirring frequently. At this stage, add the sugar and coarsely ground pistachios and almonds. Keep cooking until the milk is reduced to 1/3rd of its original quantity and is quite thick. Chill, then churn in your ice cream maker as you usually do. Pop the rabdi ice cream back in the freezer until ready to eat.

To make the caramel sauce, put sugar and vinegar in a saucepan along with 1/4 cup water. On a medium heat, stir until the sugar dissolves then leave it alone. Watch the pan closely as the sugar bubbles and gets to a deep amber color. At this point, turn off the heat and immediately pour in the orange juice. Step back as the sugar will bubble over and it can splatter. Once the drama dies down, stir your caramel to make sure there are no lumps.

Heat oil in a pan. Put your jalebi batter in a piping bag, snip off the end and pipe rounds directly into hot oil. Fry until golden on both sides and serve immediately with a scoop of rabdi ice cream and a drizzle of caramel sauce, with more sauce on the side.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I've found my perfect cookie

It's a bite sized cookie, with flavors of a pie, shape of a croissant and a pretty, pretty name. It's Rugelach. I first heard of this cookie when it became the baking pick for Tuesdays with Dorrie a couple of months back. The looks, the concept - everything was fascinating. And I've dreamed of making this cookie ever since. I ditched hundreds of recipes floating around and went straight to the master. It's Dorie Greenspan's recipe that I used, and ain't I glad I got it so perfect the very first time. So what's rugelach? It's cream-cheese pastry dough, rolled then cut into wedges, spread with jam and sugar and fillings of choice, rolled into crescents and baked. First the dough. Dorie did it in her processor, but I just went and did it by hand. Put 100 gms cream cheese and 100 gms butter out of the fridge until they were soft but still cold. Added both to a cup of plain flour (I omitted the salt because I use salted butter). Rubbed the flour and but...

Mystery Fruit

This only happened a few times every year, just when the rainy season kicked in. A street hawker will come by, straw basket on head. He will yell "kaul chapni" and I will run out to buy a bundle of these. Stuck together like flowers, they looked like a bouquet. Every hole contains a little fruit. You break out the package, peel the tiny fruit that pops out and eat it. Done slowly, it can take you an hour to eat an head. Or did, when I was about 12 years old. That was the last time I saw this fruit. I've never seen it again, didn't even know what it was called or where it came from. Three weeks back, Vikram Doctor wrote about a store in Khar that sells Sindhi foods. He described this fruit and I knew it came from my vivid childhood memories. And finally, I knew we were talking about lotus fruit. Now talk about coincidences. Last weekend, I was passing by a lane in Bandra and for the first time in many, many years I saw the straw basket filled with my mytery fru...

Of Brun and Bun Maska

There is more to Bombay's breads than the pao that goes into pao bhaji and vada pao. There's Brun. and there's bun. We will get there. First, you have to get to know the city's Parsis. And Iranis, who are also Zoroastrians, but came to city a little later, in the late 19th or early 20th century. And when they came, they brought with them these little cafes that dot the city. I am no expert on Irani chai cafes. And I can't tell you whether Yazdani Bakery will provide you the best experience or Kyani's. But I can tell you a few things you need to ignore when you get there. Appearances don't matter; so ignore the fact that the marble/glass top tables and the wooden chairs look a bit dilapidated. Also ignore the rundown look the place sports. Instead, get yourself settled. And order a bun muska. This one's familiar to you as a first cousin of the soft hamburger bun. It's similar, but just a tad bit sweeter. Maska, of course, is the generous dollop o...