Makhane ki kheer (milk pudding)

Yes two recipes in a row! And no that’s not because of what the Google stats told me. It’s just that I happened to make these two on the same day and figured that I must write them up before I forget – much like so many other delicious, totally original recipes that could never make it to this blog of mine!

I love this dessert! To be fair, there aren’t too many desserts out there that I don’t love…but still this features in probably my top 10 desserts! Again it’s a very simple recipe. Has to be – coming from my mom. She has this knack of simplifying all recipes – big or small. Trust me she does. I can’t tell you how many times I’d tried to make baingan bharta (curried eggplant) but it just wouldn’t come up to my expectations and all these recipes I tried were so tedious. They were from all over the internet. Then I asked my mom what she does. After I got her recipe I told myself that this is the last time I’m ever trying this dish. Lo and behold! I had the tastiest baingan bharta at my table! DH absolutely loved it! And her recipe – it was so simple! You know the last time I made it I got all the ingredients measured so that I could share it over here but it’s just one of those recipes that I was talking about at the beginning – poor things they never got the privilege of being here!

Anyway enough of gabbing let me get down to the recipe!

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups makhane
• 3 cups milk (I’d 2% on hand so I used that. Whole milk would be much better. Don’t use anything less than 2%. If you do don’t call it a dessert )
• 6-7 tbsp sugar.
• Chironji according to taste. It adds a nutty texture. To me this dessert is incomplete without it but you can substitute it with slivered/chopped almonds.

Method:

1. Grind the makhane in the food processor. Most will grind to a powder and some on the top will be in chunks. That’s exactly what we want.
2. Add the milk, sugar and makhane (from step 1) to a sauce pan and bring to a boil.
3. Simmer till the mixture thickens. The kheer will thicken a little after cooling.

The Lonely Plant

This is proof that life exists. In our vegetable bed. That life can survive. In our vegetable bed. Proof that there’s enough food and water there. That life can grow there. Most important of all that we’ve more than a tinge of green thumb!

Can you see those cabbage-like leaves towards the top right? Well that is cabbage. Those greens to the top left? Yes those are some salad greens.

The title of the post should actually be the lonely cauliflower. It did have a lot of its clan for company but looks like they couldn’t survive the heavy snow. I’m totally ignoring the fact that we planted them so close that they hardly had any space to breath. Have you heard about “survival of the fit”? We know it by heart. So much so that when we were planting these we figured that all these cauliflowers would fight each other to grow the best and hence we would get a bumper crop! Ok honestly – yes they were uncomfortably close to each other but it was the snow that killed them.

We have this 8 ft X 8 ft vegetable/flower bed and we wanted to grow vegetables like we’d just bought a farmland! It was quite a learning experience. For example little did I know that the tiny cauliflower head that I buy at the supermarket takes up 6 times the space in our vegetable bed! Jokes apart, as you can see, the leaves of the cauliflower do spread almost 1ft in each direction!

On a more serious note, despite the fact that only 1 out of 12 cauliflowers survived and that too doesn’t look too healthy – we were so happy to see it! Fruit of our labor as they say.

I was reading the Farmer’s Almanac Gardening Guide and it’s foreword struck a chord with me. To quote, it said

“Digging in the dirt, planning a spring garden, weeding, and watching seeds become healthy plants both soothes and lifts our spirit. Gardening is indeed about hope. We believe seeds will sprout or we wouldn’t sow them; we plant a tree so that our grandchildren can enjoy one day.”

So true! I can tell you that every time we plant something we would watch it daily to see if it has grown or not and then admire it.

The cauliflower and the quote above have totally motivated me to start planning for the summer vegetables!! Yippee!

Sweet and sour tamarind (imli) chutney

It’s been such a long long time since I chattered here. I went on a nice long  vacation and then after coming back just couldn’t get my fingers and mind to type something up here. Well in the meantime I was looking at the stats for my blog on Google Analytics, just to see if my long absence had put a dent in my viewership and what do I see! The recipes on my blog seem to be the most popular of all my content – that quite surprised! I never thought of my blog as a cooking.recipes blog so I must say it was indeed a pleasant surprise!

Continuing that spirit I thought I would bring to you another recipe. Sweet and sour tamarind chutney. Or as we call it in Hindi, Khatti (= sour) Meethi (= swet) Imli (= tamarind)ki chutney.

I don’t make it often but when I do, I make it more-than-required quantities and have it ready in the fridge. Every time I want to make it, I forget the proportion of the ingredients. Of course, I learnt this from my mom – I mean to make this chutney not to forget the ingredients! So this time I made sure that I measured everything that I add. It’s quite simple to make and is so yummy! Yum! Yum! Yum!

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp Tamarind paste – easily available in Indian stores
• 1/2 cup Sugar
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 tsp chilli powder
• salt to taste

Method:

1. Add all the ingredients to a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Take a big enough sauce pan so that it doesn’t ooze out on boiling.
2. Let it boil till it reaches desired consistency. If it’s oozing out of the pan then simmer. I like mine to be flowing consistency but not watery. Note: The chutney thickens a little after cooling.
3. Quick and simple!

I got approximately 3/4 cup of chutney from the above ingredients.