Oats halwa!

This post is a long time coming! I tried this tasty halwa a year back and wanted to post it for the past month , but forgot totally about it!

Ingredients:

White Oats - 1 cup

Sugar - 3/4th of a cup

Elaichi powder- 1/2 tsp

Cashews - 10 whole ones

Food color - as  you wish

Milk - 2 1/2 cups

Water - 100 ml

Ghee (Clarified butter) -  200gms

Procedure:

1.) Take a tsp of ghee in a medium heated stir fry pan.

2.)  Add oats to it and roast it till the raw smell of oats dies away.

3.)  Cool it and grind to a nice powder

4.) Add milk to a pan and bring to a boil, add this powder and stir well for a minute, until it becomes a thick paste.

5.)  Add sugar to the stir fry pan and add water just to immerse it and make a sugar syrup with oily consistency. This takes approximately about 2-3 minutes after the syrup starts to boil in medium heat.

6.) Add the oats milk paste and keep mixing. Add ghee in parts in equal inervals until it becomes an halwa.

7.) Add your choice of food colour, elaichi powder and cashews roasted in ghee as garnish and serve.

This is a very nutritious halwa, rich in fibre and protein!

Raw mango halwa!

I will tell you a full-on captivating story now. My mother-in-law is here with us. My hubby V had asked her to make mango thokku, which is his only and favourite oorugai/pickle item! When we went for grocery shopping last weekend, we selected a raw mango which was quiet big weighing nearly 3 pounds. We paid a lil over $5 for that mango thinking of the resulting tongue tickling taste of 'mango thokku'. When my m-i-l peeled the skin for making thokku, she noticed a pale orangish yellow colour. The mango was not ripe though! It was very stiff and tasted to find it very sweet. She told me about what happened and we both decided to try out halwa as a $5 note danced in our memory! And the rest is history.......

Ingredients:

Raw mango pulp- 1 1/4 cup
Sugar - 1 cup
Ghee (clarified butter) - 2 tbsp
Cashews - 5 nos
Cardamom powder - 1 pinch
Water

Procedure:

Take sugar in a deep fry pan and add water till it is immersed
Make the mixture boil vigourously for 5 mins in medium heat. Take a bit of the mixture between your fore-finger and thumb, move those fingers apart from each other, the mixture should come like a string between the 2 fingers (we used to call this as 'kambi padham')
Add the mango pulp and stir well and let it thicken. Keep stirring.
Take 1 tbsp of ghee and roast cashews until golden brown in it
Add 1 tbsp of ghee in the thickening mixture and continue to stir.
The mixture will not stick to the pan after a minute or so.
Mix cashews and add cardamom powder.
Raw mango halwa is ready to serve!


Courtesy: My m-i-l.