Showstopper Laadu

Spelt and Edible Gum Laadoo (गोंद के लड्डू - डिंकाचे लाडू)

Diwali is that time of the year when you indulge in things you normally don’t do and to top it, I have inherited Mother’s irrepressible need to make something exotic each Diwali. Every year she would make all the absolute essentials such as ladu, chivda, shankarpali, chakli, et al, but she would come up without fail with a distinctive showstopper for the Diwali pharal (breakfast) that would remain in her guests’ and our minds for a long time. 

I can’t forget her spectacular Gujarati moong-gotey- spicy mint stuffed baby potatoes, coated with a soaked moong dal batter and deep-fried to perfection. She had made rose petal and rava laddus when it still hadn’t become a fashion to clutter everything from decorative brass troughs to food photos with rose petals. Or for that matter, her baking karanjis at a time when ovens weren’t permanent fixtures in most middle class households. 

So it was in this quest for that “something different” that I thought of gond laadus!

There is something very mysterious and unattainable about gond laadus. 

It’s the scarcity principle at work here – a product is coveted and in demand if it is restricted, limited, or inventory is extremely low. As kids, we would be very unreasonably rationed one laddu whenever these laddus were made for a new mum undergoing postnatal confinement in the extended family.  

This was one treat that mothers could “hand over their heart”- without batting one compunctious eyelid - deny their kids.  For the otherwise doting matron, this wasn't a delicacy to indulge your child; it was a health supplement for one of her sorority who had this only opportunity to eat well and rest a bit while she healed.

But why?!

For one, the stuff that goes into these laddus was prohibitively expensive and not always easily available. Then, these laadus were thought to be very “heat inducing” and thus unsuitable for regular consumption (by this I mean what would have been “regular” consumption if we had been allowed unrestricted access). 

On a lighter note, I think the most demanding and difficult task was that of keeping those laddus from marauding kids and men folk. I remember one neighbouring aunty sharing her clever tricks of hiding the dabba of laddus inside other larger dabbas or inside the flour bins and changing the hiding place of the laddus everyday.

But seriously, it simply wasn’t the norm in an average home to indulge in such luxuries so impulsively, so rampantly. 

Then making these laddus was not a very easy task too, what with such involved preparations of buying the best quality, purest acacia gum, sourcing the purest marking tree nut kernels (godambi in Marathi) and the sweetest and plumpest of dried fruit and nuts and seeds.  The cold larder preparations were equally onerous– with the lynching of the dried dates, the shelling and hand pounding of nuts, the sourcing of the ghee which had to be made of cow’s milk – light, fragrant, yellow and grainy. 

When it was my time to eat these laadus with abandonment, I was both too overworked and too stressed to eat these. And yes, postpartum weight gain did weigh heavily on my mind.

Over the years I have made many heirloom dishes for my girls to learn about them and had made these laadus for the first time a couple of years ago.  Some of the remaining gond and kharik had patiently waited in banishment in the furthest corner of the pantry to return to favour. The rest of the ingredients were available at home. Gond laadus it was going to be this Diwali. 

How easy was that! But good things don’t come so easily and certainly not without a contest, do they?

Recent admonishment by my GP has made me introspect about sugars and fats of another nature and description. How on earth was I going to make gond laadus notorious for their calorific excesses and sweet and unctuous treachery?

Bingo! That’s the exoticness I have been looking for. That’s the show stealer- the showstopper challenge of my Diwali preparations.  

What ensued were perfect, lower calorie, enhanced nutrition Spelt Dinakacha Laadus.

My daughter has been trying out alternate foods in her quest to eat healthier. She recently introduced me to Spelt, a delicious and nutritious ancient grain with a deep nutlike flavor. It’s a cousin to wheat, but offers a broader spectrum of nutrients compared to wheat. It is an excellent source of vitamin B2, a very good source of manganese, and a good source of niacin, thiamine and copper. It’s great cholesterol-lowering properties make it good for cardio-vascular health.

Another of the daughter’s discoveries is coconut sugar (not palm sugar). It's sugar made out of the sap of the coconut tree. It has become quite popular recently as a low calorie substitute for sugar for it has a Glycemic Index of 35 compared to the GI of refined white sugar (60) and brown sugar (64). Its caramely jaggery-like taste meant it was a perfect fit on the flavour front. 

The selection of olive oil to shallow fry the edible gum and roast the spelt flour was an adventure that paid off well.

So ladies and gentlemen, presenting the showstopper - Spelt and Gond laadu!

Ingredients

2 ½ cups coconut palm sugar (you can get it in any health food store or online)

1 ½ cups desiccated coconut 

1cup edible gum crystals

1cup almonds  

1cup cashews  

1 cup dried dates (kharik) (you can use fresh dates too)

1 cups whole meal Spelt flour

3 tbsp white poppy seeds 

1 tbsp ghee

 ½ cup Olive oil for frying the gum 

1 tsp ground green cardamom 

½ a small nutmeg, grated/powdered 

Method 

Break the dry dates into small pieces in a mortar and pestle. In Marathi we call this “chechne” - the equivalent of lynching! Remove the seeds (it’s a good idea to count the khariks and then check you have those many seeds – so you don’t accidently get a seed in your mixer and break the blade during the festive season! – I have done that once!) 

Transfer the pieces in a microwave proof dish and pop it in a microwave for a minute or so. Remove and cool the pieces thoroughly. This helps to dry the dates even further and facilitates the grinding.

Heat a kadhai and lightly toast the poppy seeds and remove them onto a plate. Then lightly roast the nuts in the same kadhai and keep aside. Toast the desiccated coconut lightly and set aside. Lightly roast the almonds and the cashews as well and set aside.

Heat about a tbsp of the olive oil in the same kadhai and add two tbsps of the edible gum and pan-fry until gum puffs up and changes colour.  Take care not to burn the gum. Repeat this with the rest of the gum crystals adding more olive oil, till all the gum is fried. Set aside to cool. 

In the same kadhai, add the rest of the olive oil and roast the wholemeal Spelt four till it lets out a heavenly aroma. Set aside and cool.

Keep a tbsp of the toasted poppy seeds and an equal measure of the toasted coconut aside, so you can mix it into the mixture to introduce some texture.

Grind the kharik bits into a crumbly mixture. If the bits grind unevenly, sieve the ground mixture through a large holed sieve so you get uniform meal. Remove into a large mixing bowl. The kharik will lend sweetness to the laddus as well.

Reserve some of the cooled fried gum puffs aside, again for texture, and whiz the rest in the mixer or crush in a mortar and pestle. Remove into the mixing bowl along with the kharik meal.

Mix the nuts, coconut and poppy seeds and whiz the mixture through a grinder and remove in the mixing bowl.

Prepare the coconut sugar syrup in a heavy bottom pan by adding the sugar and a little water.  Bring it to a boil.  Continue cooking until the syrup turns sticky.  It was hard to tell the “string consistency” of syrup made with coconut sugar and I was making it for the first time, so I just went by my gut feeling. In any case, we need the syrup only to bind the nuts and flour mixture.

Turn off the heat and add the powdered ingredients, roasted Spelt flour, the reserved whole gum puffs, poppy seeds and toasted grated coconut. Add cardamom and nutmeg powders.  Add a tbsp of ghee for the flavour. Mix well.  

When the mixture cools a little, shape them into small balls or laadus. 

Store in an airtight jar. 

Party on my timeline!

Thank you all for your love! 

(Photos by Amruta Nargundkar)

When I was growing up, my birthday was rarely celebrated on the date.

I was born on the day of Diwali. Mother doesn’t tire telling everyone that I was born at the most auspicious hour of Lakshmi Pooja muhurt- on the most important day of Diwali- which is the most significant and favourite festival for most Indians. Thence, it was always a double celebration for the family at Diwali with my birthday thrown in.

My grouse that we didn’t do anything on the “real” birth day,  could not stand up to Mother’s most enthusiastic, “Look, the whole world is celebrating your birthday on Diwali! The best day of all days!”

My first memory of a celebration was in kindergarten are around half moon karanjis and a return gift for each child of a notebook and pencil. I have a memory of Mother bringing in a steel container of those home- made karanjis for the class kids of Shishu Vihar. I also remember she had got with her my “birthday frock” and dolled me up at school.

But perhaps I didn’t need to rack my memory. This became one of the umpteen and oft-quoted anecdotes of Mother’s about her special sartor, the traitorous “always late Yadgiri Tailor”. It seems he had once again broken his promise on the delivery of the beautiful baby pink Hakoba lace frock, but Mother had sat in his shop (in Indian parlance- on his head!) till he finished sowing the last button on.

When I look at my childhood photos, I realise those tailored frocks were really pretty. In my world now a tailored frock for a kid would be considered an uber luxury. However, the little me considered it not cool. All my thin, slim friends could fit into “readymade” dresses. But not me, as they didn’t make plus sizes in kids clothes – for that matter in any ready to wear clothes.

So when an uncle gifted a ready made frock from an upmarket kids’ store called “Little Shoppe” one birthday, my joy knew no bounds. Moreover, it was a boxed gift, wrapped in shiny paper.

Very like the birthday a Pinky or Deepu from Hindi films would receive.

The box contained all the excitement and charm of the little red frock Jaya Bhaduri got from a doting brother in the film Guddi. I felt so fashionable! So posh!

The frock and the joy didn’t last long as it burst at the seams the first time I tried it on. I insisted it fit me very well, but Mother wouldn’t hear my pleas to mend the split sides.

It was not worth it, according to her, but certainly was worth spending one afternoon fashioning out a shopping bag out of it.

My ideal birthday party was only found on silver screen. There was something so compelling about the kids parties in the Hindi films of my childhood.  I am talking about the song and dance (the Twist!) routine, the short frocks and white long-johns and shoes, the party games, twisted paper streamers, concertina garlands and speckled balloons kind of a party. There would be an array of toys and gifts on a table and sweets and samosas. Turbaned and cummerbunded and funny waiting staff went around serving orange and rose coloured drinks to all the little guests!

On my 14^th birthday, my last one while in school, I insisted on having a birthday party for my school friends, for which Mother and Dada did their best. Dada made mixed out wonderful milk shakes for the girls in our newly acquired Sumeet Mixer, a novelty for us in those days.  A few years older to me and a real charmer, he had a field day with the girls.

That was the time when I was into Mills and Boons romances, so I got 7 of those as gifts from my friends. That seemed like a treasure, but when one considered that we would knock one down in an hour and a while, this trove wouldn’t have lasted long, I suppose.

Having said that, there was something thrilling about being the first one to read a brand new book. 

Unfortunately, my memory of this perfect birthday is marred, for I never got to read all those books ultimately. Most of the girls bullied me into lending them all but one of those books saying I wouldn’t be reading all of them that night. For some reason, I don’t remember reading the rest. Maybe there was a reason?

For a long time in between, birthdays were lost in life’s Bermuda triangle of growing up, negotiating relationships and managing expectations and dealing with disappointments. 

Until my golden 50^th last year.

This was a turning point, half time perhaps – as my little one would say. As a kid my Appu thought everyone lived for 100 years, and each year on my birthday she would count backwards, frowning a little less each year as she improved her mental math skills, trying to figure out how many more years I had before I turned 100.

My 50^th birthday was a turning point, when I can say I learnt to unabashedly enjoy the day and lap up the love that came my way.

I realise I don’t have half time exactly – so why not!

This birthday was a quiet celebration on the family front. A birthday cake lovingly baked by my firstborn, a cosy dinner at the Coconut Lagoon, phone calls from loved ones… 

What made this birthday most memorable was the gush of greetings and wishes, the outpour of love and affection from my friends and family on my timeline and inbox on Facebook, email, SMS, phone and even LinkedIn!

Thank you all my dear folks for the “party” on my timeline and in my favourite food groups – replete with streamers, paper chains, speckled balloons and glitter; with boxed gifts nudging a huge birthday cake!

So blessed, so privileged, so fulfilled to be loved so this birthday! Who needs another 49?!

In our typical Indian style, I am ending this on a sweet note – with a falooda that I had made for my Amu’s birthday some months ago.  

Falooda

Ingredients

1cup vermicelli

4 glasses chilled full cream milk (try not to boil the milk, if you can)

Sugar/sweetener as required

6 tsp sabza seeds (basil seeds)

8-10 tbsp rose syrup

6 scoops of vanilla ice cream

1 packet red coloured (any flavour) jelly (I used a vegetarian one!)

½ cup chopped pistachios

½ cup chopped almonds

6 strawberries (optional)

Method

Set the jelly according to package instructions.

Cook the vermicelli in boiling water till al dente. Drain and rinse in cold water and chill in refrigerator till needed.

Mix the rose syrup and the crushed cardamom with the milk and add sugar/sweetener only if required.  If you are confident about the milk you are using, try to use it without boiling it. It tastes better! Chill in the refrigerator.

Soak the basil/sabza seeds in a bowl and pour enough water over them to completely submerge. When they swell and look like blobs of jelly with small black dot in the centre, strain and keep aside.

To assemble the falooda

Frost 6 tall glasses. Divide the cooked vermicelli between all the glasses. Add a few spoons of jelly. Repeat the same with the soaked sabza seeds. Pour the milk over them, taking it up to the three-fourths level. Add a scoop of ice cream to each glass and drizzle with some more rose syrup if required.

Garnish with chopped almonds and pistachios. Place a sliced strawberry over each glass and serve with a straw and a long spoon.

The sublime and the subliminal

Appi Payasa or Poori ki Kheer (पुर्यांची खीर) 

दसरा कशावर बसला ? (What sweet/mithai did you make for Dasara?) was the opening gambit for many a conversation of women chatting to their neighbours over fences and walls or balconies and windows.

These festivals had their ritual favourites – Holi was partial to puran poli, Ganesh Chaturthi mandated modaks, Narali Paurnima was nothing without a narali bhaat and Makar Sankranti synced with Tilgul and Gulpoli.

Diwali, the king of feasts, was in its own league and delighted in a wide variety of sweets and snacks.

That left Dasara and Gudi Padva a bit of latitude with a choice of shrikhand/basundi/ sudha ras/aamras/with the usual palaver of pooris in tow. 

For the less enthusiastic women/householders, there was recourse in a “sluggish sheera” or a “cursory kheer” and kanavla.  For a very curious but equitable reason, just as a batch of karanjis or gujiyas never went without a chaperone modak brother, the feminine kheer was always accompanied by a little ear-shaped boy calzone known as kanavala – after its shape.  

Taking a step back, cleaning preceded cooking. Days before every festival, women would vie with each other in cleaning their homes. One neighbour would set the tone and others followed turning the street into a veritable dhobi ghat, with sheets washed and rugs beaten bare. 

Ridding their homes of webs and dust, the women set about stocking their stores after getting their walls whitewashed or their thresholds decorated. The bright yellow turmeric smeared doorsills dotted with vermillion and white lent symmetry to the mango - marigold torans, while giddy sugarcanes propped precariously against the jambs. 

Rangolis -riotous or regimental - claimed their rightful role in the foreground.

This Dasara, “What to make” lost the duel to “What to clean”. A grueling work schedule had seen me out of the house for most of my waking hours preceding the festival.

But, while this was a very agrarian thanksgiving festival, we couldn’t venerate the gods and goddesses out of a sty, could we!

If dirt is matter out of place, there was no dearth of dirt in our midst.

The first half of the day was spent in cleaning the house, and our minds of sloth and filth in no particular order.

Cooking could only start after the house and I, as the head chef, stepped out of a state of pollution and profanity and entered शुचिर्भूत sacredness. 

And I wasn’t even thinking of सोवळ /ओवळ - the traditional notions of purity and pollution. 

So it was, that even as we arranged the “पाटी -पूजा/ आयुध पूजा ”, or worship of books, tools and implements in thanksgiving, we were undecided about what “sweet” our Dasara was going to “sit on”.  The pantry hadn’t been stocked - what a piteous state of affairs, when the atta flour bin was empty.

Flitting between the kitchen and the altar, giving instructions to an already ravenous family  - knead the maida, grate two carrots, pluck some flowers and wash the niranjans with silver polish…where’s that piece of sugarcane?

Everyone brought whatever he or she revered to place in the pooja – books – pens – the poet/dreamer in the family brought her book of poems– the drummer, her sticks - while I set a litre of milk to boil, thinking I should at least make the quick-fix-kheer and a couple of kanavalas for the “sake of shastra” …   

We forgot the tools! Get some of your fancy shmancy tools, I said to the husband.  “This has got it all,” he said, handing me a shiny red grip.

His latest fad purchase from Bunnings Warehouse is a multi-tool – scissors, three types of knives, cutting pliers, wrench – and what not - all in one.

Whatever -  I have no time - I must go back to the stove to mind the milk that’s reducing very patiently in the midst of the flurry. Now to make the kheer and fry some pooris and the naivedya thali will be ready.

I am really tired now. Happy tired, but tired nevertheless. And still undecided about the sweet dish.

My mother-in-law used to come up with something unique for naivedya all the time, in times of plenty and periods of paucity, for umpteen religious occasions right through Shravan maas to dhanurmaas and Sankranti. 

As I stood staring at the dough in front of me and shushing the milk threatening to spill over, I thought of Atya, as I call my mother-in-law. 

Always smiling, always resourceful, she is the epitome of patience and peace - and piety.

That was a light-bulb moment– when her unique two-in-one kheer called Appi Payasa that I had tasted once, came to mind - and settled the matter.

Our Dasara sat on Appi payasa or a kheer made with miniature pooris.

The multi-tool is subliminal, too? Wow!

Appi Payasa (Poori ki Kheer)

Ingredients

For pooris

1 cup atta or plain flour

1 tbsp semolina

1 tsp sugar

A pinch of salt

1 tbsp oil/ghee for shortening

Oil for deep-frying

For payasam

6 cups full cream milk

100 gms khoya, grated (you can use some cream to thicken the milk

3-4 green cardamoms, crushed

¼ tsp grated nutmeg

A pinch of saffron

Splenda/any brand of sweetener/ Sugar/ to taste

Slivered almonds, pistachio nuts

Method

Mix the plain flour, semolina, salt, sugar and shortening with a little water into a stiff but pliable dough. Rest for about 20 minutes. Then knead the dough for a few minutes. Divide the dough into five or six portions and roll out each ball into a large chapati. Cut out small pooris using a round cookie cutter.

Deep fry a batch at a time till golden and drain on absorbent paper.

Boil the milk in a thick-bottomed saucepan stirring it occasionally. Add the grated khova and let it dissolve. Then add the cardamom, nutmeg and saffron. Remove from heat and add the sugar/sweetener.

Slide the little pooris into the thickened and sweetened milk and rest for 10 minutes until the pooris get soaked. Garnish with slivered almonds and pistachios.

Serve warm.