Holi 2024: A day to remember

So...I'm going through an intense writer's block. Maybe it's because I've had a pretty crazy week so far (work-wise) or maybe it's just because I don't know what to say about this meal. It was probably the best meal I've had in uni, and not just because the food was good, but because the entire experience was such a pleasure to be a part of.

I'm going to start by saying, Happy Holi (in advance)! This post is going to be about my ideas on how to make holi just a little bit more interesting with the food you cook. By the way, credit to my friend Ananya for making a bunch of the food you see here (the pav bhaji and the Pani Puris were hers and the rasmalai cake was a joint venture) and credit to all of my other friends in today's post for having the intestinal fortitude to take on a night full of spicy Indian food (Ananya and I had to make sure we had non-spicy dishes for the weak)

Anyway, here's the breakdown. On the table, there are 4 dishes broken down into a BUNCH of components. There are naans (Indian flatbread) with Chola (Spiced chickpeas), Pav (Indian bread roll) with bhaji (Indian vegetable dish), Puchkas/Pani puris (hollow dough balls stuffed with potatoes and filled with flavoured water), and for dessert, Rasmalai (Indian dessert) made like a tres leches.

I'm not going to give you full recipes for everything this time, because tbh I don't know exactly how some things were made. The Chola was made from a spice mix I got from home, and I don't know what went into it. The Puchkas and Pav Bhaji were made by Ananya, but I don't think she remembers the recipe so I'm going to skip over those too. That leaves 2 things: the naans and the rasmalai. 

First, lets look at the naans. Making these is pretty easy, but it might anger your parents, so don't show them this recipe. I've made a few edits to the recipe I used at home because I frankly didn't have the ingredients to make it correctly here. The first thing I did was buy whole wheat flour and use that. Whole wheat flour is healthier, but higher in gluten, so it will require more water. If you decide to make it with just normal flour, reduce the water in the recipe to about half, and then add more water as needed during the kneading. What I did was bloom some yeast in warm water, then mix in the wet ingredients (some yogurt and some oil). Then, I mixed in the dry ingredients (mostly just flour and salt), and formed a dough. I let the dough rest for a bit, and it was ready. 

When I was ready to eat, I rolled it (using a bottle as a rolling pin) and cooked it on a cast-iron pan. Non stick WON'T WORK HERE, DON'T USE NON-STICK. You need a cast-iron pan. Heat the pan until it's hot enough that if you drip a couple of drops onto the pan, they dance around for a bit before evaporating. Then, brush one side of the naan well with water and put that side onto the pan. Let it cook until the top begins to bubble up and the bottom has become brown, and then flip, cook for a couple of minutes until the top is browned, and then remove. Brush with melted butter or ideally, ghee, and top with garlic, herbs or whatever else you want to, and serve.

Now for the rasmalai tres leches. That had a few elements: Vanilla sponge, whipped cream, rabdi (sweet indian cream) and the actual rasmalai (cottage cheese based indian dessert). The vanilla sponge is a simple vanilla sponge, although I'd suggest spicing it up with some cardamom, clove and saffron if you have the resources. The whipped cream is also simple, and low on sugar (THIS IS IMPORTANT. THE CAKE WILL BE TOO SWEET OTHERWISE). The rabdi is basically milk boiled with sugar and spices until it thickens. That rabdi is then poured over the sponge and left to soak in for a few hours. Meanwhile, about 20% of the rabdi is saved in a bowl, and used to soak the rasmalais. 

Now you're wondering, "what the hell are rasmalais?" Well, they're basically cooked cottage cheese. You first take a pot of milk and boil it. Reduce the heat and then add some lemon into the milk. Keep adding and stirring until the milk splits completely into milk solids and whey. Take a thin cheesecloth and pour this mixture through, straining out the whey and keeping the solids in the cloth. With the solids in the cloth, pour in some water and rinse them once or twice, but not more. Then, leave the cloth and solids in a bowl for a bit, letting some of the remaining water and whey drain out for an hour or so. When that's done, take the milk solids out of the bowl. This is cottage cheese. Now, knead the cottage cheese for a few minutes (depending on how hard you knead, between 3 and 6 minutes, but NEVER MORE), until it just comes together to form a smooth ball. Then, break into smaller pieces (pasta sized) and shape into little discs. In a pot, boil some water with some sugar and a bit of flour, and then boil these small discs in the water for a couple of minutes until they float, and then, CONGRATULATIONS! You've got rasmalai. Soak them in the rabdi from earlier, for a bit until you're ready to serve. Put on top of the cake and eat some with each slice, or just eat them straight up with some of the rabdi.

Now I'm sorry there's not as much I can give you when it comes to the other recipes, I really don't know much about how they're made, but I will leave a couple of recipes I think sound good. For the Pav Bhaji, this seems like a good link. For the Pani Puris, I honestly don't know which one would be good but I'll hazard a guess on this one. As for the Chola, this should be a decent recipe.

Recipes

For the Naans - Makes about 6 naans

180ml lukewarm water

8g sugar

4g instant rise yeast

45ml yogurt (about 3 tbsp)

30ml olive oil

4g salt

250g Whole Wheat flour

Ghee

1. In a bowl, combine the water, sugar and yeast and leave for about 10 minutes until the water is frothy on top
2. Into the same bowl, add the yogurt and olive oil and stir to combine
3. In another bowl, mix salt and whole wheat flour. Slowly tip in the wet mix into this dry mix and mix with your fingers
4. Once all of the liquid is added, knead until the dough comes together into a light, slightly sticky dough. If it seems super dry, add more water
5. Once the dough is smooth and slightly sticky, cover the bowl with a damp cloth and leave in a warm place for a few hours (1-3 hours) to let the dough rise
6. Once the dough has risen, divide it into 6 (more or less evenly sized) portions
7. Over high heat, heat up a cast iron pan until it is so hot that water droplets don't immediately evaporate, but instead dance around the surface for a bit
8. Sprinkle a surface with flour, and then roll each portion out into an oval of thickness 3mm or so
9. On one side of the oval, apply a coat of water. Then, place this side facing down onto the pan and cook until the top has become bubbly and the bottom is browned
10. Once the top is bubbly, flip the naan and cook the top for 1-2 minutes until both sides are brown and crisp. Brush the top with a generous spoonful of ghee and cut diagonally into two halves to serve.

For the Rabdi

500ml milk

70g sugar

7 cardamom pods

Pinch of red saffron

Pistachios (optional)

1. In a heavy bottom pot, bring the milk to a boil. Add the saffron, cardamom and sugar and reduce the heat to medium
2. Let the milk simmer, stirring intermittently to make sure none of it sticks to the bottom and burns
3. When the milk has halved in volume, set it aside to cool
4. Use about 2/3rds of this to soak the sponge, and use the remaining 1/3rd to soak the rasmalais and drizzle on top
5. Optionally, chop up some pistachios and top each slice with them (we didn't do this because one of us is allergic to nuts)

For the Rasmalais

1 litre milk

1 lemon, juiced

30g sugar

5g flour

1. In a pot, bring the milk to a boil, stirring to make sure none burns at the bottom
2. Reduce the heat to medium-low and slowly pour in lemon juice while continuing to stir
3. When the milk splits completely into cheese curds and whey, take off the heat
4. Strain the mixture through a cheesecloth, discarding the whey and leaving only the cottage cheese
5. Rinse the cheese through the cloth for a few seconds using drinking water
6. Tie the cheesecloth and leave hanging or leave it in a strainer over a bowl for an hour or so to let it drain, discarding the excess dripped whey after
7. Once the hour is over, begin kneading the cheese with just a tiny pinch of flour. Your goal is for it to form a smooth ball, but not to over-knead it. STOP WHEN IT'S FORMED A SMOOTH BALL. This should take between 3-6 minutes, but never more
8. If after a few minutes the dough doesn't come together, add a couple of drops (literally a few drops) of water in and knead
9. Once the dough has come together, take off little gnocchi sized pieces of it and roll them into little balls, before squeezing them between your palms to make little discs
10. In a large pot, boil about 200ml water with 30g of sugar and 5g of flour. Once it's boiling, put in the little discs and cook for 1-2 minutes until they begin to float. At this point, pull them out, and et voila, you have rasmalais

And yeah! That's about it. I don't think I have to explain how to make a simple vanilla sponge, but if you need help with that, I've got a lot of recipes on this blog that use some sort of sponge, so just go looking! As for the whipped cream, I personally recommend that you add just a tiny bit of sugar, because the cake will be PLENTY sweet already.

So...with that said, HAPPY HOLI!!!