Rava Kesari

This is, for many reasons, a groundbreaking and exciting post. No Free Lunch has reached its fiftieth blogiversary! I have a very special recipe for today. Even as a home cook, I think it's very important to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and that's exactly what I've done here. I rarely cook desserts, and even more rarely exotic Indian ones. The results weren't perfect, of course, but were certainly pretty encouraging. I've even included extra pictures for this extra-special post.

Rava Kesari is a south Indian dessert made from semolina, basically the stuff cream of wheat is made from. Also, there's a lot of sugar. A whole lot of sugar. As with any dish with which I have no clue what I'm doing, I journeyed across the internet to figure out what's going on. The sugar proportion published here is pretty much the consensus among Indian cooks. In hindsight, it was a bit too much for me and probably, generally speaking, the American palette. I was also not able to get quite the color I was after. My spin on the dish was the use of turmeric, nature's food coloring, as I call it. It could be that I needed a bit more of it. The amount of ghee varies, but I went on the low side, as I have no plans to die tomorrow. I picked up a jar of it, but you can also make it at home.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup semolina
• 6 tbs ghee
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp cardamom
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• A few raisins and cashews
• A few strands of saffron

Instructions

Melt half of the ghee in a pan. Break up the cashews a bit. Toast the raisins and cashews until the nuts are browned. Set aside the raisins and cashews. 

Turn the heat down to low and add semolina. Toast for a few minutes. While this is happening, get the water boiling.

Slowly pour the water in. I started off with 1 cup, which got absorbed very quickly, so I added a bit more. I did not end up using the full 1 1/2 cups. Stir the blob of semolina until it is cooked, several more minutes.

Next, add the sugar little by little, mixing it into the semolina. The whole mixture should loosen up significantly now. Turn heat up to medium and keep stirring to eliminate any lumps that start to form. Cook until roughly homogeneous.

Grind up the saffron, and toss that in, along with the cardamom, turmeric, raisins, cashews, and the rest of the ghee. At this point, mine got very runny and the ghee was not integrating into the mixture. I continued to cook it for quite a while at this point. What did the trick was folding the semolina-sugar blob into the pooled up ghee. Eventually it all got absorbed. You want it to be a sort of sticky, pudding-like consistency. Notice how much it changed between the two pictures.

Serve hot. This recipe makes about 3 portions.