The Indian Vegan Kitchen_ More Than 150 Quick and Healthy Homestyle Recipes - Madhu Gadia [104]
Calories: 11; Total Fat: 0 g (Saturated Fat: 0 g);
Carbohydrate: 2 g; Protein: 1 g; Fiber: 1 g;
Sodium: 142 mg
Desserts
LIFE IS SHORT, eat dessert first.” I think most Indians subscribe to that saying. Eating sweets galore is tradition, from ancient temples to modern celebrations. In fact, at wedding parties it is considered a sign of status and hospitality to serve guests a few pieces of mithai (dessert) on an individual plate—before dinner!
Indian sweets are quite different from Western desserts. The variety of sweets available is remarkably wide, and in many cases there are no Western equivalents. Some of the basic categories are barfi, halwa, laddu, and kheer. Traditionally, chocolate is not an ingredient in Indian desserts, although today you’ll find chocolate barfi as sweets makers (halwai) try to cater to the younger generation.
Because Indians do not use eggs in desserts and ovens were not typically found in Indian kitchens, baked goods are not part of the Indian dessert repertoire. With the migration of Zoroastrians (called Parsis) in the 1500s, and the British in the 1700s, baked goods have been around for a while, but only recently (in the last forty years) have bakeries proliferated in India. The two baked recipes I’ve included—Whole Wheat Cookies (page 202) and Cardamom Cookies (page 203)—have been around for a long time and have a distinct flavor and texture.
The Indian equivalent to the baker and bakery of the Western world are halwai and halwai shop. A visit to the halwai shop is as fun as going to a sensational French bakery. The halwai shop is lined with trays of beautifully displayed sweets—the white, gold, and green barfi are layered like a wall of bricks, the round laddu are neatly stacked in a pyramid shape, and the halwa sprinkled with nuts are kept hot in a large, round skillet. And right outside the shop, the halwai himself skillfully makes hot jalebi—my personal favorite—in a large shallow fryer, then dunks them in syrup. Eat a plate of hot jalebi at the halwai shop and bring a sackful home for the family.
The primary source of sweetener in Indian desserts is white crystallized cane sugar. Sugarcane has been cultivated for centuries and is abundant in India. Whenever sugarcane was fresh harvested, we would have some delivered to the house. It would be our afternoon snack. Just imagine peeling sugarcane with your teeth (that took talent and strong side teeth!) and biting into the juicy and succulent fruit. You chew and chew until all the juices are sucked out, and then (and only then) you spit out the husk. It’s pure sugar ecstasy. To eat sugarcane you have to stand up, bending about 20 degrees so that the juices don’t drip out of your mouth and onto your clothes. Even now when I go to India and sugarcane is available, I love to bite into some just for the fun of it. Somehow the newer generation of kids doesn’t eat it like we did. With all the freshly squeezed sugarcane juice that’s available these days, I guess the younger generation doesn’t like to get dirty or work too hard for their treats. Now they get five times the sugar without any effort (does this sound familiar?).
White crystallized sugar is the final version of the sugarcane processing. There are other in-between stages of purifying sugar that are rarely used today, though one popular by-product is jaggery, also called gur. It’s not as shelf-stable as sugar, although it is now available throughout the year. Desserts made with jaggery have a very different taste and texture from those made with sugar. It is rich in molasses and has a soft texture. Brown sugar, as available in this country, is a reverse process of adding molasses to the finished white sugar and thus does not give the same finished results. Jaggery is now available in Indian grocery stores. If you can find jaggery, try both versions and decide which texture you like better. Honey is rarely, if ever, used as a sweetener in Indian desserts. Based on Ayurvedic practices (the science of herbal medicine), which are ingrained in Indian cooking, honey