Bapa doi (bengali sweet dish)

Here is a quick and easy -to- make sweet , healthy dish, having its roots from Bengal. I guess the traditional bengali way of making is much more elaborate but what I have is a stripped down version, that is quick to make.

What you need:
1 cup regular milk, 1 cup sweetened condensed milk, i cup yogurt (pavels or montain high, left outside the refrigerator overnight), few almonds, raisins, pistachios.

Method:
Blend milk, condensed milk and yogurt, using a blender. Pour this mixture into a flat bowl that can fit into our pressure cooker. Now add the nuts. Fill the pressure cooker with 1/4 water and place the blended mixture bowl inside. Cover with a regular lid (not with pressure cooker lid). The water in pressure cooker starts to boil. Allow it to boil for 20-25 minutes. Then turn off the gas stove.

After 15 minutes, take out the bowl, you should see the blended mixture as solidified soft mass. All the nuts would have formed a neat layer on the top.

Leave it aside and when it cools, refrigerate it.

This dish serves as an excellent dessert, easy and healthy.

"left-over rasam" curry

Nice name huh?..Well i coined that:-)

Sometimes, we just have a little bit of Rasam or Saaru(as we call in kannada) left over. Here is a quick, easy recipe to transform the left over rasam into a nice piping hot side dish for our rotis.

What you need:
1 red pepper, 1/2 green pepper, 1/2 yel1ow pepper (note that it is not mandatory to have all these pepper, just one of these peppers and onion will suffice too),1/4 onion,few leaves of cilantro, left over rasam, salt to taste, 1 tsp oil.

Method:
Take a pan and pour the oil. When hot, put in the onions and fry , when they are golden brown, throw in the peppers. Fry the misture for 3-5 minutes. Add salt suitably (as the left over rasam also has soem salt).
Add the fried mixture to the left over rasam, and bring it to boil. Granish with cilantro leaves before serving.

piping hot, tasty and quick curry done !

Serve with rice or chappatis.

Bread Jamoon

I loved this recipe when I was a kid, esp when I felt the urge to eat soemthing really "not so sweet" , prepared quickly.

Ingredients:
1/2 loaf of bread
1 tbsp cooking oil
1 cup sugar, 1 1/2 cup water, little kesar strands, few pistachios

Preheat oven to 450 F. In a baking tray/cookie sheet, grease lightly with cooking oil or spray. Cut each bread piece diagonallyand remove the skin along the edges. Please hen bread pieces spaced equally, on the baking sheet.

Bake for about 20-25 mins or till when golden brown and hard. You may have to turn the bread pieces half way during the course of baking.

While this is baking, take a deep bottomed pan, add the sugar and water. Allow the mixture to boil and form a fine sugar syrup consistency( just like we do for gulab jamoon). Add kesar strands, before removing the syrup from the stove.

After the bread is baked, set aside for 10 minutes. Now dip the bread in the syrup, and let it stay there for couple of minutes. Then take it out and arrange in a flat dish, decorate with pistachios in the middle.

Wow..that is yummy:-)

Jilebi pudding

Try out this really simple, quick and yummy recipe- esp., for te kids, I know holidas are round the corner and what else makes a "mom" happy , than to get a nice compliment form the kids.

What you need:
3-4 jelabis-can buy from the Indian mithai shop/grocery shop
1.5 cups milk
2 eggs.

Beat the eggs and milk together. In a bakeware glass pan, break down the jelabi pieces and pour in the beaten mixture. Preheat oven to 450F and bake for 30-40 minutes.
Then let the pan cool. take a rounded plate, grease it a bit and turn the baked pudding upside down.

Jelebi pudding is ready!
Enjoy!