Phirni

 

I tasted this awesome sweet dish in Libya in late 1980s when we went to a friend’s house on Eid. I just loved it, took the recipe from her, and it is a common item at home. This is prepared with rice, sugar and milk, just like the rice kheer is prepared. But phirni is made with broken rice, it is always served cold after refrigeration, and fried cashewnuts and kismis are not added.

Ingredients

Rice can be washed, dried, ground roughly and stored in air tight bottles to prepare phirni any time.

3 heaped tbsps of broken rice

6 cups milk

1 cup sugar

A few strands of saffron soaked in water

¼ tsp cardamom powder

A pinch of edible camphor (optional)

¼ tsp nutmeg powder (optional)

Instruction

-          Add ½ cup milk to the broken rice in a bowl and keep aside.

-          Bring the remaining milk to boil. When it boils, add the rice milk mixture to this and mix well.

-          Reduce the flame and keep stirring in between till the rice is cooked and it thickens, which takes about 15 minutes.

-          Now add sugar, mix well, keep on low ire, stirring in between till it thickens again ( another 10 minutes).

-          Add the cardamom powder, saffron, edible camphor, and nutmeg powder. Stir well and remove from fire.

-          Let it cool, then refrigerate and serve.

Kerala Barotta

 From childhood I have relished this dish in hotels. Later when I moved out of Kerala, I learned to make it at home.

                                                    Barotta with egg curry and banana raita

Ingredients

2 cups refined flour

Salt to taste

2 tbsps oil

About ¾ cup water

Instruction

-          Knead the refined flour with salt, 1 tablespoon oil and water. Keep adding the water slowly to make smooth dough. Cover and keep aside for 10 minutes.

-          - Divide the dough into two portions. Spread one into a big rectangle. Smear oil on the whole top surface and along the longer side, fold it like making sari pleats.  Coil this rope like dough into a round and spread with a rolling pin into a large round. See this tchnique below:

-          Heat thava on medium flame and cook the barotta from both sides, applying oil on both surfaces.

-          Serve hot with egg curry.

Baingan (Brinjal) Bhaja

This is an easy and delicious preparation that goes well with rice or chapatti. I learned this from my daughter’s Bengali classmate.

            You can see some potato wedges also being cooked alongside, for my potato lover husband 

Ingredients

2 large sized brinjals

Salt to taste

½ tsp turmeric powder

¼ cup oil to shallow fry

Instructions

-          Wash and dry the brinjals. Slice them into 1 cm thick pieces

-          Sprinkle turmeric powder and salt on both sides and spread on a plate. Keep the plate slightly tilted so that the water that comes out collects at the lower side of the plate and can be discarded.

-          Heat oil in a thick bottomed pan on high flame. Now reduce the flame to medium and drop the brinjal slices.

-          When the bottom side is cooked, turn them upside down and let the other side also get cooked.

-          Remove them from the pan and serve hot with rice or chapatis