Adventures of a Desi KnitterKnitting (and now sewing!) keeps an Indian academic sane in the States. Almost.

Yogurt, figs, a little honey

§ September 2nd, 2007 § Filed under Food and Drink § 6 Comments

I don’t think I could ever be a vegan. I could easily give up meat, which I eat rarely anyway and didn’t eat at all for half my life, and perhaps milk and cream, but never dahi (curds / yogurt). It is one of the staples of my diet and something I absolutely adore.

Dahi Bhat or Mosaru Anna (curd-rice in Marathi and Kannada) tempered sometimes with curry leaves, mustard seeds and spice-stuffed dried chillis, and garnished with fresh coriander is a common south Indian dinner item. With some lemon or giner pickle or raw mango chutney, it is my ultimate comfort food.

Then there’s Mishti Doi (sweet yogurt in Bengali) a divine, divine Bengali dessert that’s made with reduced milk, caramelized sugar (often palm sugar) and set in earthenware pots. On a hot summer afternoon or evening, a few spoonfuls are enough to make you forget the sweltering madness around you. I had way too much of it this summer (as the scale, ahem, testifies) but it’s totally worth it. Coming back, I was seized with a longing to have some more. No earthenware pot or palm sugar, but a good detailed recipe.
Some Strauss milk, some Pavel’s yogurt, and some demerara sugar – the result was less than ideal, but it’s a work in progress. 

Another yogurt favourite of mine, with which I have more success, is a beloved dessert of western India, Shrikhand.  This is made with yogurt drained overnight of all the whey, and the resultant curds (called chakka in Marathi) beaten with powdered sugar, a pinch of saffron and some ground cardamom seeds, very occasionally some pistachio or almonds. This is a rather sweet dessert, and it’s often made so sweet that one dollop of the thick, thick yogurt in your mouth takes a while to work through. I often alternated dollops with some spicy pickle to balance the sweetness, much to everyone’s annoyance at the heresy. An excellent shrikhand recipe, with pictures and detailed procedure and personally tested by me, can be found at Evolving Tastes. 

A famous sweetmeat-wala in Pune, Chitale Bandhu Mithaiwale, came up some years ago with amrakhanda, shrikhand with alphonso mangoes. This became a raging hit in the summers. The firm flesh of the alphonso makes it ideal for blending with drained yogurt, but since I didn’t have any in Delhi this August, I used the local Dussheri variety, which are a littler juicier, but incredibly sweet:

Of late I’ve seen other fruit flavours too. Manisha made shrikhand with blackberries, which looked scrumptious. I’ve been wanting to try this dessert with anjir (figs) ever since I read her post, and since I had some lovely fig and honey icecream in Delhi. I love figs only next to mangoes, and the ripe, luscious figs in the market now tempted me even more. So this morning I made some for a visiting relative:

I wanted to try out a slightly healthier, low-fat option, so all this contained was
1) a tub of Pavel’s non-fat yogurt, 2) ten ripe, peeled and mashed figs and 3) three tablespoons of honey. It made about 6 of the serving pictured above.

Really, all you have to do is:

- Take the yogurt and pour it into a bowl lined with a large, thin cotton cloth. Cheesecloth will do, but make sure it’s relatively firm.
- Tie up the yogurt in the cloth and hang it on a hook with a bowl below to catch the draining whey. I just take a thin muslin towel and tie the yogurt over the sink.
- Leave overnight.
- In the morning, take the drained dahi into a bowl.
- Peel and mash the figs  separately, then add to the dahi and keep beating the damn thing till it’s all blended and fluffy. the drier the yogurt, the better the shrikhand consistency.
- Add the honey and mix well.
- Dress with fig pieces and an extra dollop of honey when serving, depending on taste.

I’m not sure if the excising of sugar from the recipe still makes this a shrikhand recipe, or merely a desi twist on a common Greek breakfast combination. Whatever it may be, it’s delicious, and I invite you to try it!