Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I'm going to be up for a while...

10:10 pm
It's my own fault though-I really should learn not to start a sauce I know will need to simmer for three hours as late as 7, but I've been dying to get it crossed off the list and put the cookbook away! Now here I am, not ten minutes into the three hours (did I mention it was three hours AFTER the first two...) thinking I'll be up till at least 1:30.

So I've opened a new bottle of wine, and man is my apartment going to be clean!

I blame/thank Margie for this- she raised me on the best damn pasta sauces-pots of not much more than tomatoes, garlic, onion and salt that simmered on her stove all day. AMAZING-so simple-so good.

So the cheesecake was.. ok.

I wasn't as thrilled as others with it. Granted I got a small small piece, and had gum in my mouth right before. I'll have to make another. It smelled great last night though.
And anyone-how do you keep a cheesecake from sweating?
Everyone enjoyed it though and it is true what Maria said "with the whole foods cakes, there's always half left-yours there's nothing!" Made me smile to hear-also made me realize I need bigger cake pans.

10:33 pm
I'm really hoping the basil leaf I just found in the pot from the tomatoes does not indicate there was garlic and onions in the tomatoes too-bc then I'll have a big pot of wasted sauce...

I never really intended this blog to be all about food, and to rectify this, let's go back to India shall we?

First: the Aunties:


far left, Mariquin Auntie, the older sister, middle my pops, the baby brother, far right Clara Auntie. This was in the Mumbai airport on the way to Goa-Dad's showing them pics from our first two CRAZY days in Mumbai.

I've been slowly working my way through the Aunties recipes. Slowly because what seemed so easy there with three sets of hands is really labor-intensive here. Also some ingredients are hard to find.

Like mawa.

Ma-wha?

Basically milk cooked down to the solid stage. In India they cook it down in huge kettles, with someone stirring it constantly, and you can buy cubes of it-looks like crumbly goat cheese.

You can't buy it in the states, and cooking milk down is very difficult if you are not going to sit next to the stove, so I made mine with ricotta and dry milk.



I know you're thinking- this makes a dessert? but yeah, and basically forms the basis for all Indian desserts. Makes sense too- India is HOT and milk spoils fast in hot climates, so folks learned to cook the milk down to remove the water to preserve it.


*NOTE*
for everyone who wants to try making this and reads recipes that say cook it to "mawa consistency:"


Cooking it down also concentrates the milk sugars, so you do end up with a slightly sweet product all on its own. Add sugar and nuts and you have a damn tasty dessert. Very rich, but that's why Indian sweets are always so small.

Right now I could get into the whole scientific discussion of milk and it's properties... all I'll say if you are also interested in how milks molecular structure makes it behave the way it does-read McGee. And don't try to freeze milk.

10:49 pm
One Hour Down! And the sauce is smelling pretty good.

So Mawa.

Mawa is the basis of the tasty snacks my Aunties brought to Goa called neuros (in Hindi, neurios in Konkani, and gougrias in Gujarati) don't quote me on the spelling on that. So these things were mawa, mixed with cardamom powder, sugar and nuts, wrapped in dough and fried. They are not sweet though, more prominent is the flavor of spice and nuts. They are REALLY tasty with a pot of masala chai.

NOTE-Masala Chai is spiced tea. Chai mean tea in Hindi. Masala chai is made by boiling tea, water, milk and spices together and should be spicy- you should taste the pepper and the cardomom and the ginger. The horrid "chai" most places make in the states is 10x too sweet.

So neuros.

Well I had my mawa, and added crushed pine nuts and pistachios (pistas). The Aunties used cashews- but I didn't have any, and figured the pine nuts would be close in creaminess to cashews. The filling was good-really good. a nice balance of spicy and sweet, with the background notes of cheesiness of cooked milk.

Then there was the making of the dough to fry them in. The Aunties has said pretty much just ghee and flour.
Yeah that doesn't work-at least not for me.
I ended up-after trying to work the dough and cursing a lot-making a samosa dough, which worked and was good samosa dough- but was too thick for the neuros. Here's a pic of the final product



I don't think I roasted the mawa filling initially as long/well as the Aunites did- bc my filling was creamy, where there's was much more dried, and with more of a caramel flavor. Also, as I said, the wrapper needs work- I was going to check out of there were any pre-made asian wrappers, maybe of rice, that would be thin enough. My wraps were too doughy- the Aunties were crisp (just butter and flour are bound to be crisp-if you can work it into a wrapper that is...)

I'm hoping to try again this weekend...

12:36 pm
Screw the rest of the time- I'm cooling the sauce and going to bed- I'll finish cooking tomorrow.

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