It is right up there with washing a pressure cooker and house lizards *shiver*. If left up to me I would leave packing for the last minute. Or outsource it to someone. But the problem with being a Capricorn is that you never think anybody else can do half as good a job as you can. So I never let anyone else pack (the only exception being my dad). And that means I am always packing at the last minute. My dad who knows this habit and how I panic right at the end, has been reminding me since three days that I should pack. I, being me, of course only heeded that advice today. I leave tomorrow early morning.
I don’t know why I hate packing so much. Maybe because I always make it such an elaborate affair.
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.
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.
