Rabadi, Padwa Special

Anything to do with cream, butter, yogurt, I simply love!!  As a youngster, I would always pick up the whole layer of the thick cream  that formed on the milk, once my mum would heat the milk. My grand mum would churn the buttermilk and keep one blob of the yummy white butter reserved for me. She would make clarified butter and also make puran poli on the same day so we could dip it in ghee and eat it. My brothers called me Billi which means cat, always ready to pounce on the creamy stuff at home. True to my name I would scratch them with my long nails which were polished with nail paint. Those were the days........today after a long time as my son Nidhi wished to eat it, I made rabadi at home for the Padwa which happens to be our New Year. Recipe follows.....

Ingredients

1 litre of whole cream milk
Sugar as desired
8 strands of saffron
Powder of half a nutmeg

Method

In a wide bottomed pan take the milk,  add the saffron and the nutmeg powder, bring it to a boil, stir to mix the creamy layer that has formed without breaking it too much, this way when each layer forms you need to gently mix it and again let the next layer form. By the end of the process you get chunks of cream in every bite. Once you get the nearly desired thickness by reducing the milk, add sugar and wait till it mixes and melts and then again you need to boil it till it thickens with the sugar. this dish is enjoyed chilled or with hot hot puris. 

                                                   
                                                          Vegetable Made of Kand

Kand is a root vegetable like the yam, purple yam, potato, sweet potato. This is one of the yam family, white inside, not as sticky as the yam, does not soften too much on boiling too. The pieces chopped into fingers remain firm enough to be enjoyed in every bite. The recipe below is my own experi-mental one.

Ingredients
250 gms of yams, I took about three of them, peeled and chopped into fingers, boiled to a firm texture

2 onions chopped into long pieces, well separated
Some fresh coriander chopped
Salt to taste
Squeeze of a lime

For the gravy

1 onion  roughly chopped
1/2 cup fresh scraped coconut
1 tspn of poppy seeds
1/2 tspn of black pepper corns
2 green chillies, adjust the number since the other aromatics here also give enough pungency
1small piece of ginger
1 tspn of cumin seeds
1 tspn of coriander seeds
 Grind all these together to a smooth paste

Method

in a pan take some coconut oil, I use this to get a fresh nutty aroma in the dish. Once heated add the ground mixture, keep coking till it leaves the sides of the pan, add the boiled yam, stir to ix well, add the required quantity of water, mix well, let it cook for a while, now add the 2 onions that are chopped into thin long pieces, coriander and let it boil well together. Now add a dash of lime, very little, else the nutty taste would get killed. Mix and serve with any type of roti, puri, paratha or even bread tastes good. 

                                            
                                                                     This is the one I used

                                                      Holi Special Puran Poli My Way

This is an Indian bread stuffed with sweet mixture made of lentil, jaggery and some aromatics.

The colourful festival of Holi and  what comes to mind is the Puran Poli. I made it too, a little late in the day though! Like a good teacher I was busy teaching my students.....hehe...now since the exams are almost ending I am here with a special Maharahstrian recipe. Used the seasonal flower Tabibuia  Rosea to decorate my Poli. They are trumpet shaped purple flowers found in large numbers forming awesome flower beds in my colony........ Now here comes my recipe.....

Ingredients

For The dough
2 cups of whole wheat four
1 table spoon of semolina
2 table spoons of oil
A dash of salt
Mix all the above ingredients to a dough which is neither too firm nor too soft. Smear some oil, cover and let it sit for about half an hour.

For the stuffing
2 cups of split gram lentil/ chana dal pressure cooked with double the water to 5 whistles
2 cups of grated jaggery
1 tspn of green cardamom powder
1 tspn of nutmeg powder
Once the lentil is cooked, let it cool, drain ( this water can be used in your dals or a special soup is made with this which is called Katachi Amti in Marathi) and then mix the rest of the above mentioned ingredients and grind to a smooth mixture.

Transfer the ground mixture into a pan and cook till almost all the moisture evaporates, it should come to a consistency to make into balls to be stuffed in the dough. Leave it to cool. 

Method of making the poli

Make equal sized balls with the dough, stuff the mix into the dough, cover well, roll it gently and roast on a pan with oil or clarified butter or toop as it is called in Marathi, to a colour shown in my picture. Savour with a bowl of ghee. We love to dip each morsel in the lovely fresh home made ghee and stuff ourselves to satisfaction. You must try this too.