Cherry Granita

It's almost absurd how the CC has never posted this.

Ingredients

2 lbs cherries

2 tbsp white sugar

2 lemons (or 2 limes)

dash of salt

Note 1: You absolutely need the sour part. Otherwise the mixture will taste bland on serving. It's how our tongues work.

Recipe

Pit the cherries. The CC knows that this is serious work. Buy a pitter (seriously, the only "special purpose" device that the CC owns!)

Blend them with the ingredients in a blender. Filter them through a sieve into a bowl.

Stick the mixture into your freezer. Every hour you need to scrape it. What this really does is turn everything into ice crystals.

Is this work? Not really, if you set a timer.

Serve scooped in a martini glass - preferably with a basil leaf!

Fruit Salad

The CC just adores the name mostly because it totally lies about the underlying subject — well, maybe not about the "fruit" part — but this ain't no bloody salad!

This Indian dish has so much amazing science and trickery inside of it that it's worthy of the slipperiest of slippery gods. (Oh, Agni! Oh, Loki!)

What is it?

Fruits in a milk reduction with complex spicing.

When stated like that, it sounds so boring which it totally is not. It's a masterpiece of complex chemistry with that assured magician's sleight of hand which veers it towards genius.

One day the CC returned to his apartment where his roommate greeted him sheepishly, "I'm sorry. I ate it all. I couldn't resist."

The CC knew even back then the kinda effect this dessert has on people so he just said, "Why don't you go shopping? We'll make it again, and we'll make a party of it on Friday?"

And we partied.

He grilled the steaks, his girlfriend (now wife) cooked the rest of the meal, and the CC had already spent his time earlier reducing milk for dessert. We were poor graduate students but we had a blast.

How does it work?

You reduce whole un-homogenized milk until it resembles a thick soup. You add cardamom, saffron, and slivered almonds. Then you cool it down till it's really ice-cold. You add fruits in a bowl, pour the soup all over it and eat it.

When the CC added the citrus fruits to the bowl, the roommate yelled, "It's gonna curdle." Logical thinking but dead wrong! That's the magic trick.

When the proteins are denatured and the final product ice-cold, the citrus doesn't have enough time to make the milk curdle. Eat it right away or GTFO, as the kids might say these days.

The more variety of fruits you add the better. The CC prefers apples, oranges, pomegranates. You may prefer something else. Go nuts!

(The citrus fruits must be peeled. The tannins in the skin have a higher probability of making it curdle.)

What's the problem?

It's hard work. It's an insane amount of work specifically since the kinda burners that we have in apartments are rather puny.

All you're doing in the most important step is "reducing" milk i.e. you're removing the water from the milk and simultaneously denaturing the proteins.

This is one of the truly rare cases where the CC is going to talk about specific equipment. You are best off with a enamel-coated cast-iron pot — something like a Le Creuset.

There's a reason for this. The CC grew up with this dish. It took hours and hours and hours and hours of stirring. It always does. Back in the day, the CC thought that having a book would be an antidote which was logical until he dropped the book into the flames and the house almost caught on fire. Not so great after all.

What's so great about the enamel-coated iron pot is that it heats the milk uniformly.  From the sides as well as the bottom. The milk bubbles away at a uniform rate. You stir occasionally and try not to worry too much.

You'll worry anyway.

You want the milk to reduce by half. It'll change color because the water goes away and the bright white milk turns cream-colored.

The CC wants to point out that most Indian desserts involve reducing milk into various levels of submission. When looked at in that light, this is the easy end of the spectrum!

Ingredients

(serves 6)

2 gallons whole milk
sugar

6 cardamom pods
saffron
1/4 cup slivered almonds

1 orange - segmented, skin peeled
1 apple - cut into cubes
1 pomegranate - seeds separated

Note 1: The product itself is not amenable to storage but the milk mixture absolutely is. You can make more and just pour it over the fruits right before serving.

Note 2: When you serve it, it's great if you can chill the bowls ahead of time. It's not strictly necessary but it's nice.

Recipe

Heat up the milk in a pot. When it comes to a boil, reduce the heat and start stirring. Keep stirring. This is gonna take the better part of two hours or so.

Add the sugar to taste. The CC prefers less but your tastes may vary.

Keep stirring.

Seed the cardamom pods and crush them to a powder in a mortar and pestle.

The milk should reduce by half and the color changed from bright white to almost cream-colored.

You didn't miss the memo about keeping on stirring, right?

When reduced by half, add the cardamom powder, the saffron, and the almonds and take off the heat. When it has cooled down, stick it in the refrigerator till it is ice cold.

Put the fruits in a bowl. Pour the milk mixture all over it. Serve at once.

Holi Hai! (होली है। )

It's the festival of colors and even though New York is hit by the largest snow storm in years, it would be remiss of the CC to not present the ne plus ultra of Indian recipes.

It's called thandai (ठंडाई - literally: coolant.)

It's traditionally served with bhang (edible cannabis - which is legal in India!) but even without that it's truly terrific. It's very sweet but you can cut back.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

2 cups milk

8 cashew nuts
8 blanched almonds
8 pistachios
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp black pepper
4 long peppers (pippali)
4 green cardamoms
4-6 dried rose buds
1 tsp poppy seeds
pinch of saffron

2 tbsp sugar (or more to taste!)

Note 1: The CC has gone easy on the sugar. It's much more sugary than this.

Note 2: The rose buds are not optional. That's what gives the dish its characteristic fragrance. You can find them in your local Chinatown.

Note 3: It also sometimes features magaz seeds (edible kernel of watermelon seeds) but it's reasonably exotic and the CC left it out. Add 8 of them if you have them.

Note 4: The sugar in the recipe catalyzes the bhang in your brain and gives a "higher high". The nuts which have fat help dissolve the fat-soluble cannabis.

Note 5: The recipe has connections to Mughal culture. The Mughal Emperors were massive opium addicts. Oddly, alcohol wasn't much in fashion possibly because of Muslim edicts. The same logic of catalysis and sugar applies to opium.

Note 6: All the spices used are considered "cooling spices" in Indian cooking which makes sense since Holi comes on the cusp of the absurdly hot Indian summer.

Note 7: The black pepper and long pepper are "hot spices" and they're there for "balance". A ridiculous concept but you must enter into the medieval Indian mindset.

Recipe

Soak all the ingredients in the milk for at least two hours. Blend in a blender finely.

Strain and serve cold.

Watalappam

This dessert (also frequently transliterated as watalappan) is probably one of the CC's favorites even though the CC is not much of a dessert person to start with!

It's related functionally to the very Spanish flan which is another one of the CC's favorites.

The massive difference between the two is that the Sri Lankan dessert substitutes coconut milk for the cream and milk in the original. This changes the chemistry in a significant way. It also adds a ton of "sweet" spices that flourish on the island. The sugar is substituted by a very specific palm jaggery which adds a smoky flavor and brown color to the product.

Flan is notoriously hard to make. It's very finicky about the percentage of fat in the cream and the milk and the water content. Flubs are common and the act of making it requires real skill.

Almodóvar films an entire flan recipe in his movie Volver. It's both a love ode to the wonderful dessert and a character study in the great tradition of silent films. By eavesdropping on a character who's clearly very talented at making it, and watching her do the thing she loves, we learn more about her than could be inferred from mere dialog.

The chemistry of coconut milk is much simpler than that of cream plus milk. Some genius made the substitution historically and it's a knockout since the proportions in coconut milk are exactly right to get the correct consistency and hence, flubbing is kept to at a minimum.

The jaggery that needs to be used is a palm jaggery called kithul jaggery. It's a little hard to find but it has a characteristic flavor that's hard to reproduce. Regular jaggery simply doesn't have the smoky flavor and it's not sweet enough.

The CC found it in London of all places which led someone to remark, "What does the CC do in London? He buys Sri Lankan jaggery and hauls it back to New York." This has irony written all over it since the CC was in Sri Lanka earlier in the year and didn't haul it back then. However, the bottom line is "Globalization, baby!"

The dessert is traditionally steamed but you can easily make it in an oven with a water bath as long as you have large pans. It also scales effortlessly. Best of all, it needs to be made ahead of time and cooled so you will be able to impress your guests without much effort.

It's just pure magic.



Ingredients

(serves 4)

100 gram kithul jaggery
200 ml coconut milk

2 cloves
1 large stick cinnamon
1 vanilla pod
3 cardamom pods
nutmeg

5 large eggs (read notes!)

Note 1: The jaggery is conveniently sold in 100 gram units wrapped in the dried palm leaves.

Note 2: The amount of milk in a standard can of coconut milk is close to 200 ml. Good enough. This recipe is quite forgiving. Shake it well before opening.

Note 3: The CC has seen pandanus leaves (called rampe in Sinhalese) added to the coconut milk. Great taste if you have some. Can be found frozen and work like a charm.

Note 4: The jaggery is quite hard and tradition calls for shaving it. The CC smashed it with a hammer and used the pieces. It made no difference since it dissolves completely and you will filter the product anyway. Tradition frequently wastes time without asking the obvious questions.

Note 5: If you use regular jaggery, you will need 4-8 tbsp of brown sugar to get the right sweetness.

Note 6: There is no way to predict how many eggs will be needed. Firstly, the coconut milks have different amounts of liquid. Secondly, the eggs are of different sizes even within the same grade. Lastly, the yolks are of different sizes. The CC started with four and then was forced to add one more to get it right. Chances are you might need an extra egg or one less. Start with four and go from there.

Recipe

Remove the cardamom seeds from the pod. Crush the cloves and cardamom in a mortar and pestle.

In a saucepan, heat up the ground cardamom and cloves, vanilla pod, cinnamon and ground nutmeg with the coconut milk and the jaggery. Bring it to a boil and turn down the heat to very low. Stir until everything dissolves and the spices steep into the liquid. Roughly 12-15 minutes. This also has the advantage of removing some of the moisture from the coconut milk.

Taste it. It should be cloyingly sweet and the spices should be prominent. (Don't worry. The final product will be nowhere near as sweet. We still have the eggs, remember?)

Strain the liquid into a bowl and let it cool down to room temperature. (Stick it in a freezer if you're in a hurry.) Discard any spices or solids left behind. Make sure that the mixture is cold otherwise the eggs will scramble when you incorporate them.

Beat the eggs but not too much. Don't incorporate too much air into them.

Strain the egg mixture using a fine sieve into the cold coconut milk liquid above. You will need to use a whisk to get the egg mixture through the sieve.

This step is CRUCIAL. The final product will simply not work without it.

Mix the batter gently to incorporate it completely. It should be slightly dense and thick but still liquid.

Split the mixture evenly into four oven-proof bowls. Cover each of them tightly with aluminum foil.

Now, you have two choices.

Steaming: Steam the four bowls in a steamer for 40 minutes. Check at that mark. They should be jiggly. If not, steam for an extra 5 minutes.

Baking: You're not really baking. You will need a deep pan that can hold the bowls. Preheat the oven to 350°F for 10 minutes. Heat some water in a kettle. Place the bowls in the pan. When the oven is heated, and the water is boiling, pour it in the pan around the bowls. Cover the pan itself with a separate piece of aluminum foil and put it in the oven. Steam for 40 minutes. Check. If not jiggly enough, steam for an additional 5 minutes.

The trick with the water is that all the energy is going into vaporizing the water so that the egg mixture itself never goes above the boiling point of water. Very clever and this clearly scales effortlessly.

Let them cool down to room temperature. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve. They are frequently topped with more cashews and raisins but this is a bit of gilding the lily.

Halo-Halo

In today's absurd New York heat, the CC could really go for a halo-halo right about now.

The CC is not a big fan of desserts as many of you might have noticed but this one is different. It's textural complexity and visual delight lead many into temptation.

Two entirely different renditions demonstrate how generic and "meta" the recipe really is. The second is made with one of the best renditions of classical flan that the CC knows — remember that the Spaniards ruled the Philippines for almost 400 years so they've had a lot of practice.

Ibus

Rice and coconut milk in palm leaves that is boiled. Eaten with fruits or sugar.

To be fair, the CC appreciated it more than he loved it. Wonder if it would've been different with spicy food.

To be fair, this is a wondrous food just not to the CC's taste which shies away from desserts in general.

India Trip : Day 1 : Post 2

First up, the Gujarati combination of sweet and savory. Jalebi-Gaanthia.

Jalebi refers to a disgustingly sweet (and highly addictive) combination of fried spiced wheat dough dunked in the saturated sugar solution. Note the use of the word "saturated". It's not enough to have a sugar syrup. You must heat it to a high temperature so that more sugar can dissolve. You might as well label the product "Death to Diabetics!" but it's delicious!

Gaanthia refer to the highly-spiced chickpea-flour batter that is spiced. They are extremely crumbly and totally addictive. Particularly with the jalebi's above.

Jalebi
Gaanthia

Brutti ma buoni

You have to love the Italians for these. The name translates to "ugly but good" which is an accurate enough description.

To those scared off by dessert and baking, the pressure is off. When they come out misshapen (and they will), you can claim that it was "intentional".

They are light and crispy because they contain no flour (like meringue cookies.)

Ingredients

6 egg whites
1 1/2 cups fine white sugar
2 tbsp ground cinnamon-cloves

1/2 cup hazelnuts (blanched)
1/2 cup almonds (blanched)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Recipe

Roast the hazelnuts and almonds till lightly toasted. Pulse in a food processor till they are broken. Do NOT grind to a fine powder.

Meanwhile, whip the egg whites till they form soft peaks. Yeah, this involves whipping air into the eggs and it takes forever and is very laborious. Deal.

The whipped egg whites are (G + S)/W in the classification scheme. They are not a sauce so they don't show up in the list.

Add the sugar, and mix till dissolved. Add the rest of the ingredients.

Put the mixture over a VERY LOW flame, and stir till thickened and golden (20 mins or so.) Do not let it burn. You need to keep stirring and scraping as it thickens.

Butter a cookie sheet and drop them into irregular lumps at intervals. Bake at 300°F for 30-40 mins until hard.

Coconut Balls

Goodness, gracious, great balls of ... coconut.

Ingredients

dried coconut shavings (dried is crucial!)
condensed milk

Recipe

The CC using canned stuff? Try it first. You will have time to talk back later.

The recipe is simple but unfolds in two steps.

First add, the dried coconut shavings to the condensed milk and mix to form a stiff dough. The quantities depend on the kind of condensed milk and the size of the shavings. Basically, form a firm dough which should NOT be too wet. Then let it sit for 30 minutes or so.

What you then need to do is shape small balls out of it, and roll them around in more dried coconut shavings to coat the outside and give it texture.

Lay them all out on a tray. They taste better if they are slightly cool so you can refrigerate them till your guests arrive.

Coconut Balls

Lemongrass Sorbet

This was the other wonder the CC encountered at the restaurant in San Francisco in August.

This is truly an object of greedy lust, and any of you who know that the CC is not that fond of dessert should know that when a dessert item inspires food lust in the CC, well...

Ingredients

7-8 stalks lemongrass (outer leaves peeled)
2 cups water
2/3 cup fine sugar
1 cup mint (torn into pieces by hand)
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
large pinch of salt

Recipe

Cut the lemon grass into vague rounds. Smash them once with a pestle.

Add the water, sugar, and lemon grass together. Bring to a rolling boil.

Do not boil. Remove from the flame immediately.

Toss in the mint leaves, and let it steep for at least 20 minutes (until cool.)

Add the lime juice and salt, and blend in a blender.

If you want a sweeter presence, tone this down. If you want a traditional "sorbet", leave it tart. Remember that as it chills, the acid is going to lose a large portion of its edge so the solution may be quite tart but the sorbet will be "refreshing".

Line a sieve with several layers of cheese cloth, and filter the mixture. Toss the residue. (Yes! you need both the cloth and a fine sieve.)

Now, do the "sorbet" thing. Freeze, and every 30 minutes break up the mixture with a whisk/fork until you get fine crystals.

Controversial Recipes

Who knew that this bipartisan blog would draw controversy?

The recipe that seems to have generated much finger-waving, and hand-pointing is the recent recipe for Chocolate-covered garlic.

Comments (all private!) have ranged from, "Really?" to "I don't believe you!".

Thankfully, nobody so far has run a campaign to trash the CC's character on televison.

So let's understand why this recipe works from a scientific point of view. Out comes Harold McGee's tome, On Food and Cooking, which the CC will note is both exhaustive and exhausting.

Like the sunchoke family and its relatives, the onion family accumulates energy stores not in starch, but in chains of fructose sugars, which long, slow cooking breaks down to produce a marked sweetness.

Incidentally, these fructose sugars are not directly digestible by humans explaining the "gas" produced when eating raw onions, garlic, shallots, etc. Both the sulphurous content, and the indigestibility are Darwinian "defense mechanisms" against mammals eating the food store. (Hence also, the "sting" of sharp onions.)

But, we humans figured out a way.

Roasting garlic (and the whole onion family) is a time-honored way of changing its aggressive sulphurous character into a much sweeter one. In this particular case, the recipe is really braising (along with a ton of sugar) which will turn the garlic both soft and sweet while eliminating the volatile sulphurous molecules that make it "garlicky".

Hopefully, this intellectual argument will detract some of the objectors, but really, the best way is to just experience it first-hand!

Chocolate-covered garlic

This recipe sounds downright stupid at first but it's actually really really good.

Ingredients

24 cloves of garlic (peeled)
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup sugar
4 tbsp lemon zest
1 bar "high" cacao chocolate

Recipe

Bring the first four ingredients to a boil. Cook on very low heat uncovered for 25-30 minutes (stirring occasionally.) Let it cool for a bit. The cloves should be quite sticky.

Melt the chocolate (you can either microwave at a low heat, or dip a glass bowl in boiling water.)

Dip each clove in the melted chocolate, and place them on a piece of foil. Transfer to the refrigerator and let it cool for at least an hour.

Best eaten fresh.

The Universality of Human Taste : A Contest

Is there a culture that doesn't have the combination of fried dough, and sweet stuff?

We can argue about the details, but it seems to me that the above combination is pretty much as universal as it gets!

We have the Italian-American zeppole (fried dough with powdered sugar), the Spanish churros (fried dough with "just-about-you-name-it" sweet stuff), the North-Indian gulab jamun (fried wheat dough dunked in sugar syrup); the list is endless...

Donuts are similar (they use cake dough though.)

Now, the CC is not exactly a sugar fiend, but the CC is organizing a contest.

Add to the above list, and win a prize! (You can't just use a regional term, and win it; it must be original.)

Every participant that offers up an original entry to the modest list above will be given a "no-holds barred dinner chez le CC".

You know you want it!

Parisian Bakery (in NYC)

The CC doesn't even like desserts, but he does confess a hankering for both croissants and baguettes. Preferably, the former for breakfast, and the latter any time of the day. Preferably, to excess. Preferably. to serious excess!

Sadly, what passes in this country for either, would earn a place against the wall in the benevolent czarship run by the CC.

But NYC is different, right? We all knew that, right?

There seems to be this rocking place in Harlem by French-Senegalese escapees (aka immigrants) from Paris. My friend who flies to Paris every two weeks claims it's better than anything she ate/eats/has eaten in Paris (and she, my good friends, is a foodie.)

There's only one way to convince you, my gentle readers, there's only one way!



So if you want a taste, you'll just have to visit.