Authentic Indian desserts
Some of my best recipes are the ones that came out of kitchen accidents/mishaps. I used frozen grated coconut to make the patishapta stuffing, but it just wouldn’t come together even after trying for an hour. So I added chocolate to bind the stuffing and also because chocolate makes everything better. The result was FANTASTIC!…
Banana is one of the few ingredients that I prefer to eat when it goes bad (in banana bread). Every week I buy a dozen bananas, at least half of which inevitably go bad. And every week I make banana bread. Sometimes with nuts, sometimes with berries, sometimes with chocolate chips. Sometimes I add sugar,…
Grapes chutney with coconut milk Writing a food blog is a complicated and difficult business because it’s hard to find new inspirations and invent new recipes every day. But on some days magic makes itself and genius happen. Also, on these very days, words are elusive and hard, apparently. Anyway, long story short, I was…
What is summer without mangoes? Actually, the right question is: what is summer without Indian mangoes? We get mangoes here in the USA, but they pale in comparison to their Indian counterparts. They don’t have the smell, sweetness, or juiciness of the mangoes that I have grown up eating. So, I try to make as…
Rainbow pancakes are so fun to make and they look so pretty that we have been making these every alternate day. Most of the rainbow pancake recipes that I have read online are too elaborate, and, frankly, too much work for breakfast. So I have used a boxed pancake mix for these. I tried a…
What to make when you can’t find palm for taler bora? Tal/Palm fruit is to Bengali Augusts what pumpkin is to American Octobers: no one likes it but everybody wants it (albeit there are some folks who actually love palm). The traditional Bengali taler bora is the quintessential janmastami bhog. It was janmastami last week, and just…
For those of you uninitiated in Indian food, Kulfi is basically an ice-cream made with thickened milk and no eggs. Flavored with cardamoms and saffron, Kulfi is the most flavorful dessert I have ever had, and I have had a lot of desserts in my life. Just ask my weighing scale. The recipe is surprisingly…
Update: I recently tried making Nolen gurer ice cream again, but with sweetened condensed milk and grated coconut this time, as I was out of condensed coconut milk. I have to say that I like it even better this way. The grated coconut adds a nice bite while maintaining a creamy texture. I am going…
Most of the time I fail to post a timely Indian festival-related recipe because the traditional Indian Calendar follows lunar positions and I neither have nor know how to read a moon calendar. There are only four exceptions to my moon calendar ignorance (and there are at least 15 major Indian festivals), namely Holi, Diwali,…