This post has been lying in my drafts for a long time. I made these during Diwali (November of last year) and wanted to post them before Diwali but somehow that never happened.
Since I am hardly cooking here in India, (I do bake though and am learning a little from the talented cook my parents have at their house), I thought I should make use of that fact and post recipes that have been pending for a long time.
Mathri or Matthi is a very famous indian tea time snack option in North Indian homes. They are crisp, flaky, buttery biscuits/cookies/crackers, usually salty but can be made sweet as well. The basic mathri is a blend of hot melted ghee, salt and refined flour to which one can add a variety of spices such as ajwain(carom seeds), kalaunji (onion seeds), kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves), shahjeera(caraway seeds) and even peppercorn.
From Arizona to Delhi to Allahabad to Agra to Chandigarh, celebrating birthdays, parent’s anniversary, a friend’s bachelorette, cousin’s engagement and a new year I am again back to Allahabad and am staying put here for the next ten days. Post that I travel to Kolkata, Lucknow, Jaipur, another visit to Delhi and Chandigarh and a short visit to Jim Corbett National Park for one of my friends’ wedding. This trip has been very busy, and a lot of time has been spent in trains traveling from one city to the other. the trains, thanks to the fog setting in the northern parts of India, have been getting delayed, extending the time spent with the Indian Railways to even more and increasing the frustration that comes along with delays in your schedule. But now I am home, at my parents. 🙂
Being in India has made me lazy and though I have tried a little cooking/baking here and there, there has not been much going on in the novice housewife’s kitchen. And I miss it. I like to be occupied, feel busy, else my mind is a devil’s workshop. Now that I have a kitchen at my disposal (even if it’s for a few days), hopefully the mind will get some rest and some baking can be done.
To me, baking has always been therapeutic, my kind of meditation. Even when the results are not so perfect, the whole process of sifting, mixing, kneading or beating calms my mind. In those moments I forget everything else, forget the issues I might be facing, the small conversations that have pinched me and just let go. Seeing the butter turn pale from a golden yellow when beaten with sugar is an accomplishment for me. The smell of a cake baking lifts my mood instantly and a bite into a warm fresh out of the oven cake just sends me to another world.
And that is what I plan to do the next few days. Bake. Cook. Experiment. And blog. So while I am gearing for the prep of my mom’s birthday cake, I thought to share two recipes that I revisited over the last few months. I will leave you with these for now, with the promise that I will be back soon.
One is the Chauhan family favorite Triple Layer Chocolate Mousse Cake. That’s the first thing my brother and his wife request when they meet me. That’s the first thing my mom asks me to make for dessert if she is calling someone over. The name says it all- three layers of chocolate goodness- a fudgy, flourless cake topped with a dark chocolate mousse layer and finished off with a white chocolate mousse topping. For the recipe, either click here or on the picture.
I have slightly revised the recipe that I had earlier and now I am pretty satisfied with the results I get. In fact I like them a lot. The addition of roasted red bell pepper is what makes this dish special. Again for the recipe, either click here or click on the picture.
Gajar ka halwa / gajrela or Carrot halwa is an indian dessert made from cooking carrots in milk, ghee, and sugar.
Edited December 2020, to add:
Come winters and the Delhi vegetable markets are full with the red carrots that are perfect to make gajar ka halwa or gajrela. Since the first time I made this gajar ka halwa, I have made a few recipe changes. I no longer use sugar, though that is the traditional way to go. Instead I use condensed milk. By using condensed milk, cooking the bhunoed carrots in the condensed milk helps me achieve that khoya like taste in the halwa. Slow cooking is the key for gajar ka halwa, and so is cooking the halwa well. Making gajar ka halwa is time consuming but thats when you get the nice caramelization in the carrots and maximum flavor.
Original Post from November 2012:
When Christianna had taken me into the Recipe Swap group (read more about the group here), one of the things she said in our initial correspondence was that she was excited to get an Indian perspective for the swap recipes. While all my swaps have not been with an Indian twist, I thought with the Indian festival season here, I would give this time’s recipe swap an Indian twist.
When I saw the swap recipe (for a carrot pie), my initial plan was to make this carrot souffle I saw in a magazine I had just bought. But then I am not much of a fan of pureed carrots. It reminds me of baby food, and even though the recipe sounded interesting, I wasn’t sure I would truly enjoy it.
So I thought of making something Indian. Now, I am not a big fan of Indian sweets. I like them but most of them I find too sweet. If I want something sweet I generally prefer a baked good over the traditional sweets. Though I don’t mind a piece of gulab jamun, or hot atte ka halwa now and then. And sometimes gajar ka halwa too makes the privileged list.
Gajar ka halwa (or Indian carrot pudding) is a dessert of creamy, thickened milk with softened carrots contrasting with the added crunch of nuts. Milk and grated carrots are cooked until they become a dryish homogeneous mass, and then cooked with a little clarified butter (or ghee) and sugar and subtly flavored with cardamom powder and sometimes saffron strands to make absolute deliciousness.
