Gajar Sandesh -- quick easy way

My neighbors are moderately nice people. They didn't utter a word when I doused a part of their lawn along with mine with a weed killer and burnt their grass in the process. I haven't yet hollered out to them for dire help but they oblige every time I call up and ask them to peep & check if I have shut my garage door.

Theirs is an Indian family of grandparents, parents and a little daughter. Of all of them I am most thankful for this little girl who is the exact same age as Big Sis S. Big Sis S can pop over to their place pretty much any time and is always welcome, so is their little girl in my house. True to her nature Big Sis S also devours unfamiliar food with much joy at their house.

Auntie (the grandmom) is a fantastic cook. The only problem is she doesn't understand Hindi or English and I don't speak their language, so communication is difficult. She sends over Dosa and Idli and unknown-to-me fried goodies, cooked at her place and taught my Ma to make the perfect fluffy Idli. How my ma communicated and got the recipe I don't know, but I have learned to not ask for the recipe or re-create anything she sends over and instead just enjoy the delicious food.

The only teeny-weeny problem in this scenario is what do I do with the empty plates. My Ma had always taught us that a plate, bowl, whatever that had been filled with food should never be returned empty and so I feel obliged to reciprocate by sending back the plates with some edible items. However what little I know of them, I have gathered that they are very traditional when it comes to food. They rarely, very rarely eat out and enjoy only their kind of home-cooked food.

I have sent some of my food over before but have never received any kind of acknowledgment and I didn't want to burden them with stuff they will probably never eat. My over enthusiasm might put a stop to future Dosas and vadais and idlis I felt. So I usually send store bought Indian Sweets.

A week back we again got a supply of soft Masala Dosa and a fabulous chutney. We weren't going to get Indian Mithai anytime soon and I had a tub of Ricotta. So I thought of making a quick sandesh, framed on a recipe I got from here (Oops this was the page that had the recipe, I don't see the page anymore). I am usually lazy and have no time to make Chena(home made paneer) and then the sandesh, so this was a quick shortcut which I loved. Still no acknowledgment but the sandesh(or sondesh) with carrots or gajor sandesh are a quick fix delicious dessert for lazy souls like me and for maybe many of you too.

My Ma would scoff at this and say I could have as well mixed ricotta with condensed milk and have it as it is, because anything with Condensed Milk is bound to taste good. But then again I am no puritan and neither is this recipe for such souls.

Try Vee for a very nice almost step-by-step pics of making the chena(paneer) and then the real sandesh

A very fresh un-cooked recipe of Sandesh here


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Gajor Sandesh

Makes at the most 8-10 sweets

In a microwave safe bowl mix 1 cup Ricotta Cheese with 1/2 cup Condensed Milk and 1/2 cup of Mawa/Milk Powder. Add a little cardamom powder or rose essence.

Microwave for 2 mins at full power

Add this mix to a non-stick Kadhai on the Stove top

Add 2/3 cup of grated baby carrots(will cook faster). For ordinary carrots you can cook the grated carrots with 2% milk in the microwave and the add to the mix here

Stir this mix till it thickens and the carrots are done. Takes about 20-25 minutes for the amount in this recipe. If you see that the mix has thickened but the carrots haven't cooked add a little 2% MIlk and some Condensed milk and continue stirring

You will know when it is done when the mix starts leaving the side of the Kadhai

Pour on a greased square bowl or plate and allow to cool

If you have the sandesh mold and want pretty shapes do while it is warm

After I had cooled it and cut in squares I wanted to top them with a layer of Gajar Halwa. Didn't have enough grated Gajar though and so microwaved 1/2 tsp of Ghee in a microwave safe bowl for 20 secs. To that added 1/2 Cup grated Carrots and microwaved for 1 minutes. Next added 1/2 Cup Condensed Milk to it and microwaved for 2-3 minutes. Some kheer kind of thing was created which was used to top the sandesh.

Follow this recipe to make a quick microwave gajar halwa and use that as a topping instead

Top each individual sandesh with a thin layer of gajar halwa and serve

Option 2: Follow this recipe to make a Bhapa Sandesh or Steamed Sandesh. Add grated carrots to the mix. Top with the Gajar Halwa and serve

Trivia: Bengali sandesh or sondesh is famous all over the world. But there is one more sandesh famous in Bengal, it is "Sandesh" a popular Children's magazine started by UpedraKishore RayChowdhury (among the first proponents of children's novels and books in Bengal), grandfather of Satyajit Ray. Later Sukumar Ray and his son Satyajit Ray along with their family members Lila majumdar and Nalini Das revived this magazine. Since almost everyone in the Ray family were excellent story tellers and authors of children's books(Sukumar Ray and Lila Majumdar being my favorite), this magazine was a treasure of literary gems. More from wiki.

Lijjat Papad -- Karram Kurram

(This post was drafted on Friday but then we had guests staying over the weekend and this never got edited & posted)

I was on my way back home driving and suddenly I hear this voice over NPR saying Papad and Pappadam with a thick accent. Ahhhhh, some new fad of Indian cooking they must have discovered I thought.
And then the news caster went on to talk about Lijjat Papad and I was pleasantly surprised. I had a warm fuzzy feeling driving home in the sun listening about Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad, popularly known as Lijjat, completing 50 gloroius years on March 15, 2009.

Representative of a typical middle class Indian Kitchen, my Ma's pantry was always stocked with Lijjat Papad. They were fried to be served with tea when impromptu guets arrived,roasted on fire and served with dal, roasted and crumbled on some sabzi's and sometimes even made into a dish by itself.

That Lijjat was the brain child of seven semi-literate Gujarati housewives from Bombay who wanted to start a venture to create a sustainable livelihood using the only skill they had i.e. cooking, makes me very proud.

We talk about women getting more independence, equality, freedom and I think of myself and these women. Having had the exact same opportunity as any boy would while growing up, having had the same education and starting off a career in a similar role as the husband, today I bring back home less than 2/3rd of his salary not because my employer pays women less but because I chose such a role to enjoy motherhood.

Am I privileged because I have a choice to do so or did I put my freedom to wrong use ?

I do voluntarily contribute more as a parent in our household and I get immense satisfaction of shaping two lives but then again really I haven't achieved even a fraction of what these semi-literate women have.

So what is it that personifies women power? Is it the choice that many educated women like me get today or the financial freedom these semi-literate women (with very little freedom possible in a India 50 years ago) struggled to achieve 50 years ago and have achieved not only financially but also socially by empowering a large population of Indian women

More about history of Lijjat Papad here

To roast a Lijjat Papad, pop one in the MicroWave for about a minute at 100% power.

To fry, deep fry in hot bubbling oil

Bandhakopi'r Ghonto -- a dry Cabbage Dish

Bandhakopi'r Ghonto |  Bengali Cabbage and Potatoes Sabzi

Bandhakopir Ghonto or Bandhakopir Tarkari, is a regular in Bengali homes during winter, the season when the best cabbage is found. This dry stir fry of finely chopped cabbage with cubed potatoes and sweet peas is served with both rice or rotis. The uniqueness of these vegetarian dish in Bengali homes is that they are easily turned into a non-veg side dish with addition of fried shrimp or even a fried fish head(Maacher Maatha diye Bandhakopi)

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What is a Ghonto ? In simple words it is a dry vegetable dish cooked in a Bengali Kitchen

But the simplicity ends there. All dry vegetable dishes are NOT Ghonto, ghonto is a mere subset of all possible dry vegetable dishes in the Bengali Kitchen. Incidentally there is also an area of intersection with dry non-veg dishes.

What is the unique feature which binds all ghonto ? No clue, except for use of some common spices. For some strange reason unknown to me, there is BandhaKopi'r Ghonto (a dry Cabbage dish), Lau Ghonto( a dry Bottle Gourd dish), Mulo Ghonto(with radish) but there never is a Dharosh(Okra) Ghonto.

After much brainstorming(yeah I need to storm my brain on such complex matters), it dawned on me that "Ghonto" is derived from the word "Gha(n)ta" in Bengali, which means to mix.While Charchari derived its name from the method of cooking which lets the veggies char a little, I guess Ghonto too derived its name from a cooking method where you basically, mix/stir and cook. So while you wouldn't stir a Charchari much in a Ghonto you would. Following that logic, you would need veggies that can retain their shape even on mixing and so you choose veggies like Cabbage, Bottle Gourd, Radish etc. for your ghonto and not softer ones like Okra. This is just my theory, if you have any idea on the nomenclature, please do share.

For carnivorous bongs, every veggie dish has a non-veg equivalent so though Ghonto is largely a vegetarian dish you also have Muri Ghonto with Fish head and you can add fish head or shrimp even to a BandhaKopi'r Ghonto or a Lau Ghonto.

Again for some strange reason though a Bong will add Fish or Fish head to a very vegetarian dish(as above) they will not even use onion or garlic when cooking the same vegetarian dish sans the fish. So a typical BandhaKopi'r Ghonto or Lau Ghonto or whatever will not have onions or garlic and same is true for any charchari

The recipe I have here is a niramish(veg) BandhaKopi'r Ghonto that my Ma makes. To make it amish(non-veg) she will just add fried shrimp to it or fried pieces of fish head. This is usually served with Rice and Dal for everyday Lunch, with Rotis for Dinner and sometimes with Khichuri in a comunity feast like Picnic etc. You can squirt a little lime juice and have a bowl of it, just by it self too, I like it that way.

I usually don't cook my cabbage to death, I like it crunchy but usually in this dish it is cooked till the cabbage loses all its crunchiness. The hubby says my Cabbage dish reminds him of the cabbage cooked during the neighborhood picnics that he went to as a kid. That doesn't sound like a compliment, I am guessing he says that because my cabbage has a crunch and not because he has bad cabbage memories from the picnics.