Baking

http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/food-wine/make-a-summery-mosambi-pie/

Indian citruses work brilliantly for desserts.

Written by Bijal Vachharajani | Mumbai | Updated: March 15, 2016 3:26 pm

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Say the word ‘Ganga-Jamuna’ and most of us probably know that it doesn’t refer to a confluence of the two Indian rivers. Rather, it’s the name of a ubiquitous fruit mocktail which is a blend of narangi and mosambi juice. We are at a time when our shopping baskets are bursting with navel oranges and mandarins flown from different parts of the world, but Indian citruses have their unique flavours that work wonderfully in desserts. For instance, sweet limes or mosambis that grow mainly in the Northeastern part of India are equally sweet and tart to taste. You won’t find recipes for sweet lime desserts easily, but it’s not hard to swap lemon or oranges for this fruit.

Mosambi — when mixed with nimbu juice — as I discovered, is a fabulous substitute for key limes in key lime pie. And to be honest, no one in my house is a big fan of sweet limes — simply because they are too lazy to quarter the fruit and eat it. But mix it into a pie, and it’s gobbled up quickly. Also, it’s the perfect antidote to the relentless summer heat.

I turned to Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for the American dessert, which she has adapted from Miami-based Joe’s Stone Crab. But the recipe more or less holds the same across most cookbooks and is extremely versatile. If you don’t want to add sweet limes, making it with nimbu works fine as well.

Ingredients

For the crust

170g – Digestive biscuits
100g – Unsalted butter (melted and cooled)
3 tbsp – Sugar (granulated)
2 pinches – Sea salt

For the filling

1.5 tbsp – Sweet lime and lemon zest
3 large free range egg yolks (add an extra egg yolk if the eggs are small)
400g can – Condensed milk (1 can)
2/3 cup – Sweet lime juice and lemon juice (fresh, from 3-4 sweet limes and 2-3 lemons)

Method

* Preheat oven to 180° C.

For the crust

* Blend the biscuits in a mixer until they become fine crumbs. In a bowl, mix the biscuit crumbs, sugar and salt.

*Add the melted butter and mix it well.

* Use a 9-inch pie dish – I prefer to use the ones with false bottoms because it’s easier to remove the pie and cut it after baking. Spread the crumb mixture on to the bottom of the pie pan and then up the sides. You can press it with a bowl to make it evenly flat. Work quickly or the mixture will become gooier and difficult to spread.

* Bake the crust for 10 minutes until it’s light brown in colour. Leave it to cool.

For the filling

* Beat the citrus zest and egg yolks for five minutes until it’s thick and slightly pale in colour.

* Add the condensed milk and beat for another four minutes.

* Now add the freshly-squeezed citrus juice to the mixture slowly. Don’t over mix, or else your batter will curdle.

* Pour the batter into the pie crust and bake for another 10 minutes. You know the pie is done when it’s set — but it shouldn’t have brown spots on top.

* Cool and refrigerate for 4-5 hours. The pie tastes pretty much like key lime, only it’s slightly sweeter and more buttery yellow in colour.

* You can serve with a generous topping of sweetened whipped cream or sliced fruits.

– See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/food-wine/make-a-summery-mosambi-pie/#sthash.Hc6N2USx.dpuf

http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/food-wine/days-and-nights-of-nankhatai-a-grandmothers-magical-recipe-recreated/

A family that makes and eats nankhatai together stays together. Resurrecting my mother’s and aunts’ recipe.

Diwali, for my mother and her four siblings, wasn’t complete without a mountain of homemade snacks. The coffee table groaned with painstakingly rolled mathiyas, crispy chaklis, poha chivda, coconut-stuffed ghughras, shakkar paras, and cardamom-laced nankhatais. Preparations started a week in advance under the watchful eye of my maternal grandmother. Recipes were perfected — a vatki (steel bowl) of this, a pinch of that — and committed to memory. Two days before the festival, the sisters would wake up early in the morning to prepare the nankhatai dough.

My grandmother’s recipe was simple and she used steel vatkis to measure the ingredients. Cardamom was mixed with powdered sugar until it became fragrant. The sugar was mixed with generous lashings of homemade ghee. Once the mixture was creamy and fluffy, maida and vanilla essence were added and kneaded into a crumbly, sweet-smelling dough.

Forty years ago, my mother’s family didn’t have an oven. So my mother and her sisters would pop the dough into containers and hop onto the local train to go to a bakery, five stations north to Andheri, in Mumbai. No one from the family can remember where this bakery was, except that it wasn’t too far from the station. There they would line up with other home bakers waiting for their turn at the oven.

My mother remembers this ritual with fondness — it was a time meant to be spent with her sisters, when they would chat, laugh and bond over one of their favourite foods. As they waited, they would tear off tiny pieces of cream-coloured dough and shape it into plump moons and lay it out on the massive aluminium trays provided by the bakery. A chironji was pressed to the center of the biscuit. The chironji, my mother said, added an almond-like flavour. When their turn came, the bakers would heft the aluminium trays into the industrial-sized oven, and in a matter of minutes the nankhatais would be ready to take home.

When I asked for the family recipe, it came to me in bits and pieces – my mother remembered the process, one aunt remembered the amounts, and another knew what didn’t go in. I set about recreating it, swapping vatkis with measuring cups, until I had anankhatai recipe that my mother approved of.

Most people when describing nankhatai call it an Indian version of the shortbread. I am not sure if I completely agree with that – the nankhatai is richer, flakier and more fragrant, the ghee adds a distinct flavour and texture. It’s crisp on the outside with a soft center that crumbles and melts in the mouth, releasing the sweet taste of cardamom. And, of course, the delicate biscuit is perfectly paired with a cup of masala chai.

Nankhatai
(Makes about 35 biscuits)

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup – Maida (flour)
1/2 cup – Caster sugar
1/2 cup – Ghee, at room temperature
1/4 tsp – Vanilla essence
1/2 tsp – Powdered cardamom
Toasted chironji seeds or slivers of pistachio and almonds, for topping

Method
* Using your hands, rub in the cardamom powder with the sugar until it’s fragrant.
* Now, add the ghee and mix until light and creamy. Add vanilla essence and mix well.
* Sift the maida and add to the mixture.
* Using your hands, knead the mixture into a slightly crumbly dough.
* Shape the dough into tiny balls.
* Flatten the biscuit slightly, and add a chironji or almond sliver to the centre. I couldn’t find any chironji in Bengaluru, and so went without.
* Bake at 170 degrees for 15-18 minutes.

When Bijal Vachharajani is not reading Harry Potter, she can be found looking for tigers in the jungles of India or baking in her tiny kitchen. In her spare time, she writes about sustainable development and is a consultant with Fairtrade Asia Pacific.

– See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/food-wine/days-and-nights-of-nankhatai-a-grandmothers-magical-recipe-recreated/#sthash.oWqybg5G.dpuf

Make a summery mosambi pie

Days and nights of nankhatai: A grandmother’s magical recipe, recreated

A family that makes and eats nankhatai together stays together. Resurrecting my mother’s and aunts’ recipe.