Indian as Apple Pie

[Anupy] Indian food varies from region to region, and deserts are no exception.

Today, we'll be making some traditional classic deserts from Northern India including Besan Pinni, and I'll show you my favorite recipe for chai.

All that and more coming up on Indian As Apple Pie.

I'm Anupy Singla, cookbook author and journalist.

I was born in North India and raised in Pennsylvania, with a foot in both cultures.

Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, I learned English from "Sesame Street," and Indian cooking from my grandfather.

Homemade Indian food always brought our family together.

It's why I'm so passionate about preserving our culture and recipes, so that everyone can learn how to make delicious Indian food at home.

This is "Indian as Apple Pie."

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While a standard desert is not the focus of most Indian meals, sweets have a very special place in Indian cuisine and culture.

For all of our festivities we go out and we purchase very complex deserts.

We exchange them as gifts.

They're very, very auspicious.

But there are some very simple recipes for approachable deserts, and I want to teach those to you today.

So, hopefully you'll take those recipes and include them in your own celebrations.

No celebration is ever complete in our Indian American home without some Indian rice pudding or kheer.

What I really like most about this is it's so complex when you're eating it, but so simple to make.

It's essentially milk and rice and a few spices.

And we'll top it off with some nuts.

So, let's get started with our pot.

We need something a little heavier.

We'll take a little ghee which is a clarified butter.

You could do this with oil or regular butter as well.

And we'll just wipe down the bottom of this pot because milk tends to stick and it can burn as well.

Next, we'll take our milk, about four cups, and slowly and carefully add it in.

[sizzling sound] That's okay.

And there we go.

The next ingredient we want to add is some basmati rice.

You can use any rice.

You want to soak it and drain it.

Soak it for about 30 minutes, and that gives it a head start.

This is between a quarter cup and two thirds of a cup.

So, slowly and carefully just add the rice to your milk.

Now, the lid is going to go on.

I always like to leave it slightly ajar, so we don't have any overflow on the milk.

We'll let it sit.

We'll let it simmer.

And then we're going to saut our nuts, and get the rest of our ghee in here.

And again, use oil if you like to glisten the bottom of that pan.

We are now going to saut the nuts that will eventually go into our rice pudding.

We've got some almonds, slivered almonds.

We've got some pistachios that we chopped down and some cashews.

They're unsalted.

They're raw.

And we get the flavor from this saut process.

And we have some raisins that are going to go in.

These have been soaking like the rice for about 30 minutes.

I often use cranberries and other dried fruit as well.

Put in as much as you like.

And you can hear the sizzle.

We're going to let this sit.

We're going to turn the burner off.

It's still warm, so it will still sizzle and cook just a little bit.

And then we're going to check on our rice pudding.

Our milk and rice has been simmering for about 25 minutes, and I am so excited to see what it looks like.

Look at this.

It looks great.

It is starting to now thicken so much that it's sticking to the bottom a little bit.

You don't have to worry about that.

Take a little bit milk, or in this case I've got a little bit of water, and that's perfectly fine.

We're going to add just a touch to now loosen it up a little bit because you don't ever want that sticking on the bottom, and you don't want it ever to burn.

And that is perfect.

And of course you need a little bit of sweetener.

Sugar is what I'm going to go for today.

But you know what?

It could be dates.

It could be any type of sugar that you want.

I like to add it at the end, so it just mixes in really well, and it doesn't get browned because the beauty of the kheer is the white color coming from that milk.

It just looks so fresh and so inviting.

Now, we want some of our spices.

Well, the first one is going to be cardamon powder.

The powder is what just looks so beautiful in the kheer in terms of the coloring.

Just that little bit.

And now let's go ahead and put in a few saffron strains to really round out the hue.

And we're going to let it just all cook together.

Now, let's add our nuts.

We have this sautd nuts and raisins.

What I like to do is just before I serve it, add it to the one side and leave it in there so that everybody can stir it and mix it as they want.

Nothing says Indian Festival Season more than kheer does and I just showed you how simply you can get it on the table as well.

Today we're going to talk about chick pea flour.

It's my favorite, favorite ingredient to use even in deserts.

It's actually made from black chick peas that are ground into this fine powder and it's a great way to get in a little bit of protein, fiber.

It's one of my kids' favorite ingredients for one of their favorite deserts.

What we're going to make today is called Besan Pinni.

Pinni is just a funny little word that we grew up with when we would visit our family in Bhikhi, the village that my father is from.

They would make these round, I would say the original protein bites like round little balls that were delicious and the perfect amount for a snack, with tea, maybe just as a quick desert.

The first step is to make sure this chick pea flour, no matter how smooth it looks, it needs to be sifted because we want our product at the end, or our dish at the end, or our desert at the end, to be as smooth as possible.

So, I'm going to put it right in here.

I'm going to take a spoon, push this down.

You see how fine this powder comes out on the end.

Well, that step does take some time and patience.

It is really worth it, because it means you're going to get a really great dish out of this.

Now, we're going to take that and we're going to elevate the taste very simply by dry roasting it.

I've got a small pot here.

It is cast iron and it's been warming on a medium low heat to a medium high.

You're going to make sure that you're careful because cast iron retains a lot of heat, so you just want to kind of manage it.

You don't want this flour going in and then burning right away, so you want to just start warming your pot, making sure that it's just the right temperature.

And we're going to put our flour in here.

This is going in, in a dry pot.

There is no oil, no water, dry roasting, just like we dry roast a lot of our spices.

The other important part of this is to know, these are raw chickpeas that are ground down.

So, you need to cook it to really get it to the right consistency and flavor for our pinnis.

This is a really critical important step.

So, as I stir, I'm smelling this, and I can smell it starting to cook.

It's just churning, not only just smelling warmer, but also, I'm noticing a texture change on the flour.

It's getting a little heavier.

That's what you want.

So, I like to go in there and really stir it.

You see how quickly this is now going to turn.

Pull it off the stove because I don't want it to burn, and it's so delicate.

And we want to get our ghee, our clarified butter, in there, and really let this cook.

Once this is all in there-- And look, I know this feels like a lot, but this is a desert.

It's okay.

Once in a while you can treat yourself, But you need the ghee to really get in and cook the flour.

I'm just coming into the pan, and I'm just breaking down the ghee.

As it's warming, it's melting.

I want to make sure that every little bit of flour is covered.

Now this mixture needs to cook for about 40 to 45 minutes, maybe a little bit longer.

So, we're just going to continue to watch this.

Alright so let's let that cook.

I'm going to watch it, and then I want to prep my almonds and my sugar.

I'm going to grind the almonds.

Important to do because we want these pinnis to bind into a ball.

We don't want them to break apart.

We want the nuts to be ground down so that it all comes together in that same sort of consistency.

This is another step that you can do ahead of time.

Keep it in your pantry, keep it handy, and just drop it in as you need it.

Here we go.

Notice how I use the skin.

No need to soak them.

Nothing.

And look at that.

We've got a three quarter cup of sugar.

I'm going to put that right in there.

Use any that you'd like.

You can even use brown sugar.

Why did I use white sugar?

Well, I like this to be lighter in terms of color, but anything works.

I've used lots of different types of cane sugar, whatever you like.

And let's go ahead and pour that into a bowl too.

This has been cooking for 45 minutes.

I haven't been stirring it the whole time, but I've been watching it, keeping an eye on it, making sure nothing burns, stirring it once in a while.

And now I want to get in here, and I want to show you something.

It's a little easier to feel than it is to see, but I'm hoping you get a sense of this.

We started out with a heavyish flour mixed with the ghee and it's really nice and light now.

That is from all of the cooking that we're doing.

It just starts to lighten up, and it just looks so nice.

It's soft.

It's warm.

And as it's still warm, we want to put our almonds in.

They're going to go right in.

That's a lot of almonds, but it's great.

It's so amazingly delicious.

This is going to cook for about five minutes.

And at this point you do want to get in there and keep stirring it.

We've cooked the almonds, and now we are ready for the sugar.

So, let's turn off our heat, and let's move our pot.

In this case this burner is not being used, so it's nice and cool.

We don't want too much heat for that sugar because if it hits that heat right away it'll start to melt, and we just want to give this pot a little time to cool down before we take that next important step.

Basically mix it.

Stir it until you don't really see the white of the sugar.

It's really blended in.

And we're going to let this sit until it's still warm, but cool enough that you can actually get in there with your hands and not hurt yourself.

So, I want to say about 10 minutes to cool down a little bit, but it should not be completely cool because we want those little balls to really form into these perfect little pinnis so we can enjoy them later.

To really stop the cooking process, I transfer this mixture to a cool bowl.

And now it's safe.

We know it's not going to cook anymore.

It has cooled down for about 10 minutes, but it's still warm.

You want it to still be slightly warm, but cool enough to handle so that you can form the little pinnis or the little bite sized balls of besan.

So, we're going to take a handful and we're going to just now squeeze.

And I can feel that it's warm enough that it's now pressing together.

And that's the beauty of chickpea flour.

See how easily it just comes together, no binders, no extra ingredients needed.

So, now you see why it's really important to grind down the sugar, to grind down the almonds, so we have as smooth of a pinni as possible.

All those beautiful elements, the warmth of the chickpea flour, the nuttiness of it is delicious, and I'm crunching into as I bite that sugar as well.

It is so delicious.

Now I'm going to roll out the rest of these.

You can try to store them for a little while.

I guarantee if your house is like mine, they'll be eaten up immediately, so get prepared to make another batch soon.

Our last recipe was a classic Indian desert with a lot of stirring and a lot of watching the ingredients to make sure they don't burn.

This one we could do the same, but I want to give you some shortcuts with a pressure cooker and show you how much we can simplify the process.

First, let's turn it on saut.

The saut function happens without the lid.

We want to heat up that inner pot, get it nice and warm for our ingredients.

And the dish we're going to make today is called Gujar Ka Halwa.

It's a halwa made from gujar, which are carrots.

This is a traditional dish my mom used to cook, maybe once a month, once every two months, and I always remember her mixing and cooking those carrots on the stove and standing there for hours to make sure it's done and prepared perfectly.

But today, again, some shortcuts.

One thing that you cannot short cut, however, is going to be the grating of the carrots.

You might be tempted as I always am to go and buy pre-grated carrots, but why you don't want to do that is because when you do it at home by hand, you get this really nice thin consistency.

Really important because when you cook this down with the milk, it breaks down.

It really comes together.

So, I know it might feel like it's a little bit of work, but it's so worth it.

I get a large carrot, and I'll take a box grater with the big hole and just grate it down.

You'll be surprised that one large carrot is about a cup of grated, and that's what we've got here.

We got four carrots grated down to give us four cups.

Because I want to cook everything in one pot, let's go ahead and heat our ghee, our clarified butter.

We're going to put our ghee into our pressure cooker.

When the ghee is melted in the pressure cooker, add two tablespoons of raw unsalted cashews.

Once they've browned, this should only take 30 seconds or so, remove them from the pot to cool.

Next, add the grated carrots to the pot and saut them for about six minutes.

Pour in a half cup of milk and stir it all together.

Put the lid on the pot and set the pressure cooker on high.

This is going to cook down for eight minutes, and it's going to become this delicious porridge-like consistency of carrots and milk.

We're going to add a few more ingredients and make it into our gujar halwa.

The carrots are done.

They look great.

Look how much they've cooked down.

That, remember, was all the work.

We got a pressure cooker to do it for us.

We want to now add some sugar, but we want to get this started again on saut without the lid.

We're going to start warming up our pot again and adding now some of our other ingredients.

Add two thirds of a cup of sugar and stir it in well.

Continue to stir the mixture as the carrots saut for another 15 minutes.

A quarter cup of dry milk will help bring everything together, along with a tablespoon of ghee.

Continue to stir for another few minutes before dishing out our desert into a serving bowl.

We're going to now top this with our cashews.

Remember these?

They're so delicious with that saut of ghee.

Put on as many as you like.

I like it just covered with those cashews and nuts.

Oh, my gosh, so good.

And then a little bit of ground cardamon powder.

That is just that extra beautiful flavor profile that goes so well with a carrot halwa.

I already have a feeling its going to be delicious, but just in case.

The earthiness, the warmth of the carrots paired with the sugar, the milk.

It's just this balance that is just so delicious.

Now you see how we can take a complicate desert and make it simple for you at home.

There is nothing better with a delicious desert than a good cup of steaming Indian chai.

It is just so delicious, and it's so easy to make as well.

I wanted to show you the recipe that I've been making since I was a little girl.

It is a combination of spices, some basic black tea bags and a little bit of ginger.

We're bringing four cups of water to a boil and we're going to start adding our cinnamon sticks.

I like them going in first so that we can really get all the flavor out.

Just two to three sticks, break them up with your hand.

And then we have some green cardamon pods, but don't put them in yet, put them into your mortar and pestle first.

And some black cloves.

These again, are going to go into your mortar and pestle.

The nice thing about this is, you grind them ahead of time to really pull all the flavor out of them into your water, and for your chai.

It makes a big, big difference.

And so easy to do.

Let's throw in the cardamon with the husk.

Don't worry, we're going to strain all of it.

And we're going to let that really boil, all of the beautiful colors from the spices are going to come into the water here.

I also want to add ginger.

This is so delicious in chai.

I'm just going to take my paring knife and cut it right here.

And big chunks of it are really what I want, chunks or slices.

And that's just going to go in.

Now is when I want to put the tea bags in.

You really don't need anything overly fancy.

I take the paper label off, and then I just drop it in.

I like to tie it, so it stays together.

And my rule of thumb is one tea bag per cup of water.

How dark do you like your tea?

I like it medium strong, not overly dark.

So, I'm going to pull those tea bags out, but I'm leaving the spices in, so the flavors are all locked in there.

Chai is a little bit different than other teas.

We want to boil our milk along with the spices and in that water.

How much milk?

Well, just take a look at the tea itself.

How light do you like it?

If you like it a little bit lighter, then add a little bit more milk.

I love a little honey.

This is a local Chicago honey that a friend gave me.

Just a nice spoon of it is so great for my chai.

Drag my spoon in there and it just dissolves.

It's just so nice.

It smells so great.

Now that we've made our chai, we're just going to strain it, pour it into a beautiful teapot and serve it with our deserts.

[Anupy] I'm all about making Indian cuisine more accessible.

Visit Indianasapplepie.com for more healthy, flavorful recipes, cooking tips, and much more, all rooted in tradition and simplified for our busy lives.

[announcer] This program is made possible by... Leysin American School hosts summer camps for students of all ages in scenic Switzerland.

Golden country Oriental food.

BMO Bank.

Al Sahara.

Handmade rugs.