Besan no Shiro

Hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season. I wish you all a wonderful new year 2011. As always, this years resolution is to eat healthy, be happy and exercise more. However, as the tradition goes, it's mandatory to serve something sweet on the new years day. and there you get your first excuse just hours after taking the new years resolution!;-)

Of course, these days whenever I make something sweet, I carefully decide what I haven't blogged so far and then make the dish which will give me the opportunity to showcase some family recipe. So today's recipe is from MIL's kitchen - besan no shiro.

Besan no Shiro - (serves 6 - 8)

Chickpea Flour Pudding

Ingredients

• Mix and set aside
• 1 cup besan
• 1/4 cup fine rawa

You will also need,

• 1/2 cup clarified butter/ghee/toop

Boil together

• 2 1/2 cup milk
• 1 1/4 cup sugar (increase or decrease per taste)
• 1/4 tsp saffron threads

Pound in a mortar and pestle

• 5 green cardamoms, seeds only
• A pinch of nutmeg

Garnish

• few almond slivers (unsalted)
• few pistachio slivers (unsalted)

Method

1. Melt butter/ghee in a heavy bottomed saucepan.

2. Saute rawa and besan mixture for 30 - 45 minutes on low flame. Keep on stirring continuously without letting the mixture to burn. This is a tedious process but if you keep the flame too high or do not stir, it will burn. If not sauted for long time, besan tastes undercooked. So remember, more you saute, better it tastes!

3. Boil milk, sugar and saffron mixture in another small saucepan. Keep aside.

4. Keeping the gas still low, add milk mixture to the besan. Now use a wire whisk and keep on stirring so there is no lump of besan. If there is even a single lump, it will not taste good. After a good whisking, the mixture will resemble an evaporated milk.

5. Keep stirring till the mixture thickens to a pudding like consistency. Sprinkle cardamom and nutmeg powders.

6. Garnish with nuts.

7. Serve warm.

Note -

1. As the shira gets ready, switch off the gas. Let the shira cools down a bit and then cover it. Otherwise the steam from the inside of the lid will gather the moisture.

2. Do not keep shira without lid after it has cooled down. Else it will form a film of besan.

3. This shiro has to be served warm. So if it has cooled down, you will have to warm it to enjoy the taste.

4. Rawa adds some texture to this pudding. If only besan is used, it will stick to the roof of your mouth. If you like, you can also keep proportion of besan and rawa to 1:1

5. I have actually reduced the amount of ghee for this recipe. The original recipe calls for a whopping 1 cup ghee as this pudding just oozes out ghee. You make your own call.

via Enjoy Indian Food