sheer brunj, birunj or biranji, the kheer that cooks without rice....

Have you heard of sheer brunj? Well, this is a variety of kheer but not just another kheer I would say.

We all love kheer or milky rice puddings as I would introduce it to anyone who hasn't known Indian food. Which is quite unlikely in this age as I remember a Thai friend 23 years ago knew about kheer and pulav and he was introduced to pakode and much more at my place. You would agree people pick up Indian food pretty quickly and want to learn cooking once they taste it.

No I am not talking about a complicated recipe of kheer that takes 2 hours to cook. Having said that, all true kheers are slow cooked to get that taste. Otherwise it is just doodh wale chawal or mewe wala doodh for us. We wont call it kheer if it is any lesser.

Sheer brunj is the queen of kheers I would say. Or so I have grown up believing. This used to be the one kheer to impress the impressionables and to brag about when it was cooked for family get togethers. And yes, most people used to pronounce it like biranj or biranji. I figured now that most people have forgotten this name, have stopped making such a kheer just because it feels heavy on the calories scale. But then brunj was always served in small quantities. I wont add up to the mystery of this recipe any more.

This recipe takes about an hour to cook for 4-6 servings, but you don't have to work for more than 10 minutes that is for chopping the nuts and roasting the makhane. The milk keeps reducing all this while.

ingredients...

whole milk (full fat/6%) 1 L
malai 2 tbsp or amul fresh cream 100 ml
2 cups of makhane (fox nut or Euryale ferox) 2 cups
almonds 1/3 cup
cashew nuts 1/3 cup
a few strands of saffron
sugar 1-2 tbsp (this kheer is very mildly sweetened, you can add sugar to taste)

procedure..

Pour milk in a heavy bottom pan and heat till it boils. Simmer on low so the milk starts getting reduced.

Place another thick bottomed pan on the other burner and tip in the makhane in it. Dry roast on low heat till they start getting pinkish in color and become crisp. You can add 2 tbsp of ghee to the makhanas so they would turn really aromatic and would make the brunj rich. I avoid adding ghee at this step as I find it too much heaviness for a dessert. Let the makhanas cool once they are all crisp and pinkish.

Place them into a deep bowl. This a large 600 ml katori I used.

And crush them all using the bottom of a tumbler or any instrument you find useful for this. A pestle would work nicely too. The nuts will be crushed roughly, so you end up with a few bits and some powder.

Chop the almonds and cashew nuts roughly. To make the chopping easy, just rinse them all with water once, wait for about 10 minutes (this was the time I was dry roasting the makhanas) and then chop them on a board.

By this time, around 10-15 minutes or more if you have been doing a few other things on the sly, the milk has been reducing. All these chopped and crushed nuts will be added once the milk is reduced to half.

Simmer the brunj for another 10 minutes or till it gets thick and creamy. Add the sugar and malai or fresh cream to it, stir well and take it off the stove.

Add the saffron, stir and keep covered for about 5 minutes. The pan is opened to welcome a wonderful aroma.

Most people like raisins in this kheer but somehow I always skip adding them. I am not too fond of soaked plump rasins. You can always add some chironji, some melon seeds and some pistachios as well. The mix of nuts is a personal choice so go with what you like. But there will be no rice or other grains in this kheer for sure.

Some people add khoya (dehydrated milk) to thicken it, that is also a personal choice. I like the aroma and rich taste we get from reducing the milk slowly. I cooked it in a copper handi that is tin coated on the inside. It doesn't add to the flavors but a handi is a convenient vessel to cook milky dishes.

This kheer called brunj or biranji is served hot or warm. Even at room temperature but I don;t remember having it chilled. Even now I don't like it chilled. Warm it should be for me. The nuts provide a nice mouthful of textures, makhana becomes soft almost giving it a feel of bread pudding when the brunj is served hot. Chill it and the makhanas will be slightly chewy, though the taste wont change. The texture of fried makhana in ghee is better if you like to do it that way.

Do let me know if you make it, hot, warm or chilled?

triple lemon cakes for a kid's birthday : the kind of cakes that spread sunshine...

Yes, a triple lemon cake with lemon glaze and another triple lemon cake with quark and cream filling and frosting. And the cake frosting was decided by the kid herself. She had told me her choice of lemon 2 weeks in advance. That's how a cake like this is born. I have been in love with lemons too, another lemon cake with zucchini has been a perennial favorite, a lemon pound cake with butterscotch sauce has been missed for long. But this one just beats everything else lemony. Even the lemon tarts that I used to bake using gondhoraj lebu long back.Yes, that good.

And why triple lemon? I used the fragrant grapefruit leaves, Indian lime zest and juice (common Indian nimbu is a lime not a lemon) and zest and juice of calamondin limes. The lemon flavor gets a really nice and refreshing depth and it's just not a tart flavor that hits your palate with a zing. The depth of lemony flavors is accentuated by quark cheese and cream frosting on one of the cakes and a lemon glaze in the second. This cake will let you know limes don't make tart cakes, they make fragrant refreshing cakes with the tingling flavors and just a hint of tartness that lifts up the sweetness of a cake.

ingredients...for the cake...
(this recipe made 2 medium sized cakes)

maida (all purpose flour/white flour) 2 cups
cold pressed sunflower oil or olive oil 1 cup
(I prefer using pure oil for citrus flavors as I feel the citrus flavors blossom nicely with oil, use butter if you wish)
sugar 1 cup scantly filled (say 1 cup - 2 tbsp)
3 large eggs (or 4 small)
baking powder 1.5 tsp
baking soda 1/2 tsp
grapefruit leaves 2
Indian lime juice 1 tbsp (or lemon juice 3 tbsp)
salt 1/2 tsp
freshly zested lime peel (from whole limes)1/3 tsp zest

ingredients for the lemon glaze
lime juice 2 tbsp
water seeped with finely chopped grapefruit leaves 3 tbsp (I microwaved the water and chopped leaves in MW)
powdered sugar 1 cup

ingredients for the quark and cream frosting

*quark cheese (homemade) 1 cup
amul fresh cream 200 ml
sugar 3 tbsp and lime juice 1 tbsp ( I used 3 tbsp of the lemon glaze)

preparation...

Start with sieving the flour along with salt, baking soda and baking powder.

Start to preheat the oven at 180 C. Line the baking pans of suitable size with butter paper, no need to grease. I used 2 pans, one 7" and another 6" diameter. Keep the lines pans aside.

Finely chop the kefir lime of grapefruit leaves (or any lemon leaves you can get) and mix it with the flour. Make sure the leaves are completely dry before you roll them up and chop them in chiffonade.

Break the eggs in a deep mixing bowl, add the sugar, lime juice and zest, calamondin juice and zest and the oil and whisk till homogeneous.

Add the flour mix and fold gently till homogeneous. Pour into the pans and place both the pans into preheated  oven. On the middle rack these two cakes take 45 minutes to bake. But be careful after 40 minutes as the baking time and browning depends on your individual oven as well.

Do the skewer test and take out the cakes when done.

 Cool the cakes a bit and then invert the pans to take out the cakes. Peel off the parchment or butter paper and let the cakes cool of wire racks. If you don't have wire racks, use the atta chhanni (the sieve used for atta in every Indian home), or the perforated plate used to cover milk pan, for cooling the cakes.

One of the cakes was sliced horizontally using a large bread knife when cool. The kido wanted a sandwiched filling. She loved watching the cake being made and I loved seeing them so curious.

Let the cut halves of the cake cool completely before smearing the quark and cream frosting. I drizzled the lemon glaze mix in the cut side of these cake slices to make them taste richer.

See I used some confetti as well over the lemon frosting. The kids tasted it and declared it tastes like atta. Wow I say. Real ingredients always win. Confetti is not real. Quark and cream frosting was loved so much more than any bakery frosted cake.

Mean while make the lemon glaze and the quark and cream frosting.

For the *quark and cream frosting, just whip them both together till firm and homogeneous. Add powdered sugar and lime juice or just the lemon glaze as I did. Taste and decide how much sugar and lime you want. Keep it minimal.

For lemon glaze just mix the lime juice with sugar and mix till it looks like a thick slurry that can be poured on to the cake. I used some water seeped with grapefruit leaves too, do so if you are using the leaves.

I used the large grapefruit leaves in the base for one of the cakes. Just a crafty idea that made the kids delightful, tiny young lime leaves were used on the quark and cream frosted cake as well.

Nothing complicated, just the frosting sandwiched between the two layers, then the cake covered all over with the same and a fork run around to make a ziggly pattern. Slapped on some more frosting as the kids were feeling happy by doing so. The leftover cream was licked right away. And then the cake was cut without delay. I hurried to take a picture..

See the luscious cake inside...

The cake with lemon glaze was cut at her home. I was reported the cake didn't last even 10 minutes between 4 adults and 2 kids. Such things make us contented like nothing else.

*To make the quark cheese you just have to mix 100 ml of amul fresh cream to half a liter of full cream milk (6%), warm it and add 1/4 cup buttermilk or homemade dahi to it, mix well and leave it overnight. It gets set the next day, you would see it splits and releases some water, just pour all the contents into a cheesecloth lined sieve (placed on a bowl to drain the whey) and refrigerate the whole apparatus. The quark with will ready within 5-6 hours. Thick and creamy. I have been making fresh cheeses since long just as experimentation but Deeba uses then spectacularly, see how she makes them..

These cakes are made from scratch at home, with no special equipment for frosting or piping. Although that is not rocket science either but simplicity can be beautiful and you can always whip up something with homely ingredients. Real ingredients I would say, the way we have been using traditionally.