thecookscottage

Strawberry Fields Forever

There is a glut of strawberries on the market this week and vendors with their colourful produce, neatly arranged in circular mounds are to be seen everywhere. Strawberries in baskets behind cycles, on the pavement, balanced on the head, in the malls...unbelievable. I can recall a time when strawberries were to be found only in the wild, in the hills ,and then, only by the hardworking or the obsessed.You can guess under which heading my friends and I could be classified.
With such abundance one can be irreverant. The strawberries can be mashed and moulded into  a dessert , a delicate pink concoction...a pretty and fluffy ending to a good meal.

Ingredients

2 egg whites
1/4 tsp salt
12 gms / I tbsp unsweetened gelatine
30 gms/ 1/4 cup honey
350 gms/ 2 cups strawberries, mashed in a blender till smooth
(25 gms/ two tbsps double cream)

Beat the egg whites with salt (and a pinch of cream of tartar if available ),  till fluffy and in the soft peak stage.Dissolve gelatine in  warmed honey. Add the gelatine and honey mix to the strawberries. Mix well.Slowly add the mash to the egg whites while continuing to beat, adding as much air to the mixture as possible..When it becomes a light pink and holds it shape, spoon into bowls and chill till set. Top with a dollop of cream and /or a slice of strawberry.Serve straight from the refrigerator.

Ukadiche Modak-Sweet Offerings

All around Maharashtra, in the countryside, across the fields, in the sheds of potters and craftsmen, you will catch sight of Ganapati idols, white as rice flour, waiting for the brush of colour and devotion in the joyful days ahead

Meanwhile, inside homes, preparation has begun to host the God and offer prayers and offerings. What better way to start than by making modaks, which are the deity’s favourite food? Sant Jnaneshwar identifies Ganapati with the totality of sacred texts and knowledge and even in the Padma Purana the modak is said to be the symbol of perfect knowledge. It is said that, just by inhaling its aroma, a man can achieve immortality because he would understand the essence of all sacred books and become proficient in the sciences and arts.

Traditionally made on the first day of the festival no other sweetmeat is as associated with Ganesh Chaturthi. Besides the 21 modaks traditionally offered to this most popular and beloved of deities, prepare to make plenty more, because his tastes have spread and most people cannot resist these sweets made, as they are, in perfect bite sized pieces.

Ingredients

Makes approximately 25 modaks

Filling

• 2 coconuts grated fine.
• 1 ½ cups pale yellow jaggery grated
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp raisins
• 1 ½ tsps elaichi powder, freshly ground.
• 2 tbsp cashew nuts chopped
• 1 tsp ghee

 

Dough

• 2 cups of rice flour, ready made or make your own in a grinder. I use  two scented rices : Chinor and Ambemohr . This rice should be just harvested, young  rice so that the dough becomes more pliable.
• 2 tbsps flour/ maida
• 2 tbsps ghee
• A pinch of salt
• 2 cups of water
• Pinch of saffron

Fry the chopped cashew nuts in a teaspoon of ghee till golden brown. Grate the coconuts and gur. Put both in a kadhai along with the sugar and raisins and cook stirring continuously till the mixture becomes soft and sticky and fairly dry.. Take off the fire, let it cool and then add the elaichi powder and the cashewnuts . Mix well and set aside while preparing the dough.

Mix the rice flour and maida. Heat two cups of water with the ghee and as it comes to the boil add the salt and the rice and flour mixture. Let it come to the boil twice, mixing all the while to dissolve any lumps and then remove from the fire. Now knead well till the dough becomes soft.

Roll out into circles of 3” diameter. The circles should be not more than 3mm in thickness like a fine chapathi. Grease hand with a drop of oil and place the circle on the centre of the palm. Fill each circle with a teaspoon of the coconut and jaggery mixture. Now gather the outer edges of the circle as if pleating cloth and swivel the modak in the palm as you close the edges. This takes some practice to get right.( You can also get little modak makers in metal or plastic but I cannot vouch for their effectiveness.)

Place the prepared modaks on a muslin swathed plate in a steamer, top with a bit of butter paper to prevent them from getting soggy, then cover tightly with the lid and cook for 10-12 minutes till done. Make in batches according to the size of your steamer. You can use a colander over a trivet in a cooker if you do not own a steamer.

Soak a few strands of saffron in a bit of melted ghee. Put a droplet of saffron infused ghee on top of each modak for colour and essence.

Now you are ready to bring Lord Ganesha home.

 

Sonar Lemony Cake

One of the difficulties encountered while using lime to flavour baked goods, is that the taste tends to dissipate the moment it is exposed to heat. When I received a precious batch of Gandh Raj, (pronounced Gondho Raj) a fragrant lime from Bengal, I was determined to capture its essence in a cake. A simple yellow cake seemed the right thing but I find many sponge cakes either greasy and dense, or dry and dusty, in short a bit sick making. It was a question of tweaking the amounts of those basics- flour, sugar and butter, to get the right texture while preserving the tang of the lime.

The secret lies in using buttermilk instead of milk and in adding limejuice to the icing. Now Gandh Raj may not be within your reach but don’t let that stop you from trying out this recipe as ordinary lime will do just fine. Maybe not as "Sonar".

Ingredients:

3 cups of flour

2 tsps baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

200 gms butter (at room temperature)

325 gms or 1 ½ cups sugar (preferably ground into a powder)

3 eggs and 1 egg yolk

3 tbsp limejuice

1 tbsp grated zest of lime. ( Mix the zest with the juice and set aside)

¾ cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla essence

Mix the four ingredients above .

Icing:

1 cup confectioners sugar (use powdered sugar if you don’t have confectioners sugar)

1 1/2 tbsp limejuice

1 tbsp buttermilk

Heat oven to 175 degrees C. Butter cake tin lightly. Sift the flour baking soda, baking powder and salt together twice. Beat eggs with the yolk in a small bowl till well mixed. In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar well by beating with a hand mixie for at least 6 minutes, first at high speed and then at medium speed. The mixture should really look like cream.

Now add the egg mixture in two halves, beating well on low speed after each addition. Add one cup of the flour mixture and beat till just incorporated into the mixture. Now add the buttermilk and lime juice mix alternating with the flour mixture. Each time you make an addition mix the batter for just about 10 seconds.

Spoon the batter into the prepared baking tin and bake for 35- 40 minutes till golden brown on top. Insert a skewer or fork to check that the inside is cooked (the fork should come out clean without any attached crumbs or batter.)

Mix the caster sugar, buttermilk and lime juice to make the icing and drip a bit on top while the cake is hot. Wait till it has cooled before dribbling the rest of the icing on. The icing gives it a nice tartness and distills the lemon essence while dressing up the cake for presentation.

In spite of my temperamental oven this turned out pretty darn good !!

Rawa Rasmalai-Semolina sweets

Rawa Rasmalai

As long promised here is another  recipe for a rawa /suji semolina dessert.

Ingredients

1 cup suji
1 coconut, ground
1 cup sugar
5-6 elaichi/ cardomom, powdered
1 tbsp ghee
1 1/2 litres milk

Heat ghee in a kadhai and roast the suji for a couple of minutes. Add the ground coconut and half of the sugar. On low heat keep on stirring the mixture till the sugar dissolves. Add the cardamom powder. When the mixture begins to get sticky take off fire and form small oval shaped balls. Set aside for a couple of hours.
Boil the milk and add the rest of the sugar. Keep simmering on low heat  till the milk becomes half its original quantity i.e. 750 ml. Now immerse the suji rolls gently into the hot milk.Remove from fire. Let it cool. Chill for at least half an hour before serving.

The Good of Grain-Rawa Kela Aur Gur ki Mithai

Semolina, Banana  and Jaggery Dessert

It is a little worrying to note that the government does not seem to be paying as much attention to promoting the continued cultivation of grains. Horticulture and other, newer, agricultural initiatives are capturing the subsidies and are invariably the chosen ones in projects promoted by state and central governments.But these are not essential to a poor country. China produced more than twice the amount of food grains we did last year. Even if we take the stipulated minimum of 500 grams of grains a day per person , at present, we do not have enough to sustain our vast population for more than a day in case of any disaster. Because we do not produce enough, one reason being the inadequate management of soil, grain still remains comparatively expensive for those living below the poverty line.

Grains will always form a large part of the main meal in a poor country. It is imperative that India uses its vast land resources by bringing additional land under cultivation.Not only that but if those grains were also rich in minerals and vitamins, grains like jowar, bajra and ragi, we would not see the kind of malnutrition we see  on a large scale in Africa. GM crops have not returned the benefits of better health as was hoped.

Till at least thirty years ago wheat and rice and semolina were used in so many foods. Rawa / Suji or semolina is made by soaking wheat grain in water for several hours .It is then spread out to dry a bit before being ground and winnowed.The coarse grits produced in this manner is called rawa.

Chakki- Stone Grinder

Years ago several houses had their own chakki for grinding.
In a few places wheat is still ground in a chakki,two humungous cylindrical stones, in this case, granite,. The lower cylinder is stationary, while the top one is moved , the wheat being poured into the circle on the side to spread out between the two stone layers and ground.This one may have been used domestically , the women of the house grinding the wheat. A chakki of this size would be handled by two women. Larger chakki's were rotated with the help of cows or a camel.
In Punjab, this type of a chakki , operated with the help of animals is called a kharas. A grinder  run with the aid of a water wheel is called a gharat. The latter is more common in the far north,  in the foothills of the Himalayas.
By the beginning of the twentieth century in India, wheat grinding became more mechanised with oil engines.By the late 1940's one third of all chakkis in Punjab ( the main wheat growing belt ) were power driven. And today most people buy packaged ready ground wheat from commercial mills. Till just a few years ago we bought the whole grain, picked out stones and chaff and other extraneous material , washed and dried it in the sun, and then sent it , a few kilos at a time, to the local flour grinding mill. It meant that each family could decide how much bran to keep in the wheat flour.Chapathies tasted different in each household, with varying textures and thicknesses. In small towns and villages this is still the case.

Rawa is as much used in the South for upma and home made sweets and in the north mainly for halwa.I have a huge, old  collection of rawa recipes,  many of them sweets, which could do with a revival as it is a healthy alternative to expensive milk and refined sugar sweets which have become so popular today. Look out for more rawa recipes soon.

Rawa Kela Aur Gur Ki Mithai/ Semolina, Banana, Jaggery Dessert

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup rawa / semolina
3 bananas
3/4 cup gur / jaggery.
1 1/2 cup coconut milk made from 1/2 fresh coconut , chopped.(you can use ready packaged coconut milk as well, or plain milk with a drop of vanilla if you cannot get coconut milk)
2 tbsp. ghee or butter
A pinch of salt.

Extract the coconut milk by pureeing the pieces in a blender along with 1 and a half cups of hot water. Strain the pulp through a sieve to make thick coconut milk. Make a smooth puree of the bananas and jaggery in a blender. Heat the ghee in a kadhai and fry the semolina, stirring constantly on low heat till it turns an even, light brown.About 8 minutes. Add the banana and jaggery puree and stir a couple of times.Turn off the heat. Now add the coconut milk and mix well.

Pour mixture into steamer

Grease a heat proof shallow dish, plate or steel thali. Pour the mixture into the dish and steam covered for 25 minutes.This can be done in a steamer or a pressure cooker without the weight on. It may take less time in a cooker- probably about 10-15 minutes.The mixture absorbs all the liquid and becomes dry on the surface.

Turn out on to plate

and cut into cubes.

Serve hot or cold.
This will keep for several days if  refrigerated.

2/12/2006

Bebinca at Bogmalo- A Treat for Christmas

Waking up to the sound of piglets squealing in the scrubby backyard of the Rodrigues home with the morning sunlight already hot as it streams in, a vast contentment fills me on this day in the third week of an break in Goa taken in a tiny village off Bogmalo beach, where the rhythms of the slow Goan day have remained unchanged in spite of the presence of a couple of new large five star hotels in the vicinity.

Speeding up is not an option in Goa in early winter except while driving a motorcycle through the narrow lane. Quickening the pace means rivulets of perspiration and even taking a shower must be done in a leisurely way.

In the time I have been here I have got to know most of the inhabitants of this village. The toddy tapper, the garage owner, who does repairs on local cars and scooters, the toddy distiller, Claudie from the restaurant, whose shack is filled with locals who come in mainly to watch the cricket or football match on his TV and give his restaurant an air of a business doing well.

I go to buy a litre of milk from Connie’s shop . She keeps everything from penlight batteries to notebooks to tea and red chillies in the space of a dark ten by ten room, while her son does his homework in the corner and in the shadows behind her I see her husband lying in his bed, the victim of an accident some years ago he had a head injury and cannot walk anymore and is very weak. Connie, though, is cheerful as she leans her elbows on the sill of an open window which serves as her counter and chats with the villagers who pass by to catch the bus or walk to the beach. Her shop is well placed as it is right on the main and only road of the village.

This morning I have an appointment with Silvie who is the owner of Sharon’s Store, a tin roofed shed on the corner of the lane on which I live. She sells baked goods, some sweets, soft drinks and a few pokshie, a round shaped bread with a cut in the middle and a crusty top. She is a soft spoken woman who speaks mainly Konkani with English words thrown in. Silvie is known in Bogmalo for her bebinca and dol dols. People from miles around come to order their Christmas Bebinca.

Bebinca is a favourite at any special occasion, weddings, engagements, homecomings or farewells, of which there are quite a few with young people living where their work takes them, far away from their families, to Bombay, the Gulf, Canada and the UK.

There are several myths about bebinca, one that it takes a hundred eggs, another that it is a hundred layers, and yet another that it requires a good 8 hours to make. These I heard at the home of Sheela, a Goan acquaintance in Delhi, whose house was always filled with bureaucrats and whose memories of bebinca, vociferously backed up by several other of her friends, were punctuated by loud laughter as she sincerely hated cooking and could not imagine anyone bothering taking such an age or such effort to produce a CAKE! Hers was, of course, bought. It made a good story. Much like mine about Maharashtrian Dinkache laadu which shall , however, keep for another time. Remembering that evening in Delhi I prepare myself for a long and hot day at Silvie’s.

We meet early in the morning with a faint breeze stirring the palm leaves. She has kept most of the ingredients ready on a miniscule counter in her tiny 4 by 6 kitchen. Silvie owns no kitchen tools to speak of. She takes a thin, well used metal pan into which she sifts the flour. She has kept coconut milk ready (or coconut cream as it is sometimes known), made from 3 coconuts, measured out in stainless steel glassfuls, to which she adds some nutmeg. Coconut milk, squeezed from grated fresh coconut infused in hot water, is very rich in saturated fats, and forms a sort of jellied stock after cooking and cooling. Coconut water is something else altogether…the liquid found in the centre of the coconut when broken, it is almost colourless and tastes a bit sweet. This water is light and refreshing especially when taken from a green coconut and contains only 57 calories and 12 gms of carbohydrates per cup. This is the soft drink of millions of Indians. Always cool, clean and hygienic it is one of the safest drinks to have. Found in most parts of India, it can be easily transported in trucks across vast distances without spoiling.

Silvie breaks two eggs into a pan and then with well scrubbed hands she breaks the remaining eggs, one by one, into a cupped palm and separates the yolk, letting the white of the egg slip through her fingers into a separate bowl. With a fork she whips the egg yolks and keeps it aside. Taking the thick coconut milk she pours it into the flour and mixes it with her fingers, leisurely turning her wrist to use her hand like a large whip, breaking up the bubbles of flour with her fingertips till it has all formed a smooth and creamy mixture. Then she adds the salt and sugar and finally the egg mixture. As she mixes Sylvie keeps talking . Through the open window behind the two burner gas cooker I see a grove of the most vivid avocado trees, with large big leaves a bright lemon green, branches weighed down with bunches of fruit almost ready to pick.

Sylvie tells me if the cake mixture does not seem smooth enough a maximum of a ¼ cup of water can be added. She takes an aluminium pot and heats it till smoking, then pours in 2 large ladlefuls of the mixture. This she cooks over a very low gas fire. She swirls the mixture around in the pan from time to time and it starts to brown on the edges and separate from the sides of the pan. As the mixture dries she takes it off the fire. It has taken about 15 minutes.

The sun is rising high in the sky when she opens the back door and walks down the few steps into her garden. She takes three bricks and forms them into a platform onto which she places a large aluminium pot. In an earthenware pot she fills fistfuls of newspaper on top of which she heaps coconut husks. And under the shade of the tall coconut palms Sylvie lights a fire in the earthenware pot. She puts the cake pan into the larger aluminium one and then tops it with the earthenware pot.

I notice now that the garden is full of coconut husks gathered untidily into a big heap under the kitchen window. The smoke curls up and becomes wisps of silver back lit by the sun’s rays. A large black pig wanders lazily by. After 15 minutes in this rustic oven the top of the cake has developed several brown spots. Then Sylvie adds a tablespoon of ghee to the top and pours in another two ladles of the cake mixture. She returns the cake tin to the oven. The second layer takes 25 minutes to brown .The process of adding the ghee and then the mixture is continued till it is finished. Depending on the size of the tin and the size of the ladle, this could be 3-5 layers.

While the cake is cooking outside we sit in the shade near the shop counter and chat with the customers who drop in. A few chairs are always placed invitingly near the door and someone invariably flops into one for a cold drink and a visit. The women are in simple dresses usually patterned with flowers. They are interested but not inquisitive about me. That is one of the nicest characteristics of the Goans. They neither stare nor laugh at the unfamiliar. Many of them, in spite of tough lives and few opportunities to earn, never try to make a quick buck off strangers, nor do they appear bowed down by sorrows. On the contrary there is a readiness to laugh and make the best of the day.

I figure it takes about 2 hours for bebinca to be made. Not the legendary eight. The myth of a hundred layers comes from the appearance which is like puff pastry in the number of layers formed from swirling the mixture around in the pan as it cooks and the story of a hundred eggs…well.I dont know where that comes from.

The caramelized taste lends itself to being teamed with a dollop of ice cream. It makes a perfect desert. And one cake will serve at least 12 people. Besides it keeps well and can be made well ahead of time. All good reasons to try making bebinca at home.

Here is Sylvie’s recipe for Bebinca adjusted for cooking in a normal oven: Preheat oven for 10 minutes at 200 degrees. Take a 7” cake pan and grease it.

Ingredients:   

• Flour-1 cup.
•   Thick Coconut milk- 1 litre made from 3 fresh coconuts.
•   Ground Nutmeg-1/2
•   Eggs–7
•   Hydrogenated fat-200 ml.
•   Sugar-1/2 kg.
•   Salt 1 tsp.
•   ¼ cup water if required.

Take 2 whole eggs and 5 yolks and whip will thick. To the sifted flour add the coconut milk and nutmeg. Mix well. Add salt and sugar and then the eggs. Mix thoroughly. Heat the cake pan on the fire till smoking. Add 1 cup of the cake mixture and swirl around till it looks like a thick omelette . Cook over a low fire, swirling the pan frequently till cooked and fairly dry on top. Transfer to oven and let it cook slowly till browned on top. Remove from oven add a tablespoon of fat and 1 more cup of the cake mixture. Return to oven and grill till brown. Repeat this procedure till all cake mixture is finished. When it has cooled slightly, the cake will shrink from the sides of the pan. Invert slowly on to a serving dish. The top should be a nice toasted brown colour.

Bebinca should be served in thin slices. Delicious on its own, out of this world with a dollop of icecream or a dash of liqueur.

Carrot Cake with Fig Jam

Spicer College in Kirkee, run by the Seventh Day Adventists, has always had a food department . They teach their students food technology and catering and produce a crunchy peanut butter, soya milk, a muesli, frozen corn plus several goodies from their bakery section among which are lamington cake, doughnuts, date cake, brownies and carrot cake. In twenty years they have not varied their products and they are uniformly good, produced in small quantities and always sold out by the end of the day.
Since they are so reasonably priced with no frills whatsoever I always pick up something if I am passing by one of their outlets. (There is one in the Wonderland shopping arcade on Main Street).

My own carrot cake recipe adapted from one in "The Joy of Cooking" is a trifle better and I wanted to bake it again when I got hold of some organic khandsari (raw cane) sugar recently. It is made with oil and might be a bit healthier with the addition of the cane sugar instead of white sugar.

Ingredients

1 cup sifted flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon powder

2/3 cup sunflower oil
1 cup raw cane sugar
2 eggs

1 1/2 cups grated carrot (about 8 small ones)
1/4 cup walnuts and almond bits or any other nuts

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Oil 2 5" round cake tins and set aside. Grate the carrots, chop the nuts. In a mixing bowl sift all the dry ingredients together. In a seperate bowl pour in the oil, add the sugar and mix well. Beat the eggs and add to the oil and sugar mixture.When well mixed add the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon, breaking up any lumps till completely incorporated into the oil mixture. Last of all stir in the walnuts and grated carrot and divide the mixture equally between the two prepared cake tins.
Bake in a hot oven for 20-25 minutes till done. Remove and cool on a wire rack. When cooled spread fig and walnut jam on the top of one cake and sandwich with the other. Decorate with slivers of carrot.

"The Joy of Cooking"
Irma Rombauer & Marion Rombauer Becker

Oh, Oh, Oatmeal Cookies

I have been searching all the general stores around to find a source for Khandsari. No luck till yesterday. Chandan's , at the end of M.G. Road has turned out to be a great place for so many types of flours and jaggery and spices. For a number of reasons I hadn't been there for years ...parking being the main problem. Before Dorabjee's it used to be THE place for all types of provisions. Typical of all general stores then, it was crammed from floor to ceiling with hundreds and thousands of things which could hardly be seen and the staircase was a death trap, a fall off point for suicidal housewives.Then the place became too small to accomodate everything and there were a host of other hassles. Things were redesigned and the groceries came downstairs and it has become self help. Now I think it well worth the trouble to go there again. Look what I uncovered.
Raw Khandsari sugar! It is marketed by Sunil Vehele whose company is called  Mahalaxmi Trade Links. He imports the khandsari from Cuba ! Besides this he he also sells organic indigenous red and brown rice from Bhimashankar which he buys on a barter system from the adivasis /tribals there. He also stocks organic jaggery and barley from Maharashtra and wheat puffs made from organic wheat from Holland. Ok so though I do support cooking globally and eating locally grown foods, I am quite happy to find that the wheat puffs are minus the chemical crap  the stuff is usually be covered with.
The Khandsari has less calories than sugar, it is a natural sweetener and is sulphur and chemical free. I bought a couple of kilos and immediately got set to try out Elise's grandmothers recipe for Oatmeal Cookies.

By making a few changes to the original recipe, using 2 cups of khandsari sugar instead of the one cup of brown and one cup of white sugar and adding a 1/2 tsp of nutmeg and 1 and 1/2 tsps of cinnamon (instead of the tablespoon recommended, as I'm sure that must be a mistake) made them just delicious.
It took 20 minutes in my oven at 350 degrees as I gave each cookie one big heaped tablespoon of the mix and I had to use a rather thick baking sheet. The general idea is to let the cookie get slightly brown on the edges and thats enough to cook it while keeping it chewy. Elise's recipe made 36 good sized cookies which are fast diminishing.

A Bout de Souffle

This morning I decided to teach N how to make something different for dessert. She usually makes either kheer or halwa. Rice kheer, vermicelli kheer, this kheer that kheer. We were all fed up of kheer. So I thought I'd teach her a chocolate souffle. We got all the ingredients together and then proceeded to put them together. I think it was as much of a breathtaking experience for her as it was for me when I saw 'Breathless' for the first time.

First of all Jean Paul Belmondo, and then those jump cuts! There we were, as students, trying to piece shots together, in continuity exercises , to make some order out of the disorder of life and then Godard turns it all on its head and us with it.This had the effect of making some film students think they had no need for the tried and tested forms of the cinematic language. They gave up, then and there, the effort of making sense; with the result that some never ever did. Jump cuts are now part of history, like morphing , and are used all the time in even the most ordinary films. They has become part of the language. You don't think twice if the hero is present in one scene one minute and in an entirely different one the next.Viewers are visually sophisticated enough to fill in the blanks of the story, to figure out why our hero has moved and even perhaps how he has moved from one to the other.They don't question the lack of continuity in space or even of time in cinema anymore.The visual world has expanded and grown so rapidly and with it our perceptions and understanding of it.
But that first time, even though it was a good two decades after the film had been made (so starved were we of new visual material in this part of the world) , -we were winded when we left the dark old Prabhat theatre and walked into the bright sunshine , all silent with astonishment after being exposed to such a fresh talent as Godard's. I will never forget it.
N must have felt the same with the chocolate souffle she made. I explained to her, as best as I could the meaning of souffle...and found she got it immediately when I acted it out. Like the yoga pranayam "sheetali.To fill with (cool) air.
Unfortunately she gave the whole mixture a jolly good stir, while it was setting, in what she thought was a a smart way to prevent the gelatine from gradually falling to the bottom, and when I returned it was absolutely 'A Bout de Souffle'.
Oh well. We will try again tomorrow.

PS: And heeeeeere's the recipe:

Chocolate Souffle Attempt 2.

Ingredients

1 tbsp sugar 4 tbsp water 2 eggs
3 tbs cocoa
2 tbsp butter
200 gms sweetened condensed / evaporated milk
3/4 tbsp plain gelatine
2 tbsp warm water

Heat water and add sugar. Mix till combined. Seperate the yolk from the white of the eggs. Beat the yolks and then add the sugar syrup.Now add the condensed milk to the egg yolk mixture and stir well. In a double boiler melt the butter and add the cocoa powder. Mix well. Do not let the cocoa burn. (You can also use 75 gms of dark chocolate instead.)Add to the egg yolk and milk. Stir well. Melt the gelatine in two tablespoons of warm water and add to the mixture. Last of all beat the egg whites and gently fold into the whole. Set in fridge. Do not stir.

Alphonso Mango Pie

Slice of Pie

This morning I went visiting...all my favourite food blogs. It was a mouth watering journey, travelling the globe with glimpses of food, from David Lebovitz and Meg in Paris to Sam and Pim in California. By the time I reached Shuna, via The Accidental Hedonist who is always full of ideas, I was inspired to try making a fruit pie. With the incredibly detailed instructions given it had to be a winner.

With no icewater in the fridge I made a quick substitute of ice cubes and water. The cubes fell into the butter and flour mix as I was pouring it drop by drop into the bowl. Disaster! The dough became some sort of cream. It had to be frozen into a semblance of a shell in the pie dish.Then I baked it blind in a hot oven as suggested, with a lot of chick peas over a sheet of butter paper in place of pie weights, for 20 minutes. That turned out great. Next step.

Mango pulp was the only fruity ingredient at hand so that was the basis of the filling. 600 gms didnt seem quite enough so I added the top of the milk and about 300 ml of milk.Then 6 tablespoons of palm sugar instead of raw sugar, 3 tablespoons of flour and 1 of cornflour. Stirred all together it looked very fluid.After filling the pie shell there was no way the top was going to sit on the filling.So I baked the filled pie for 30 minues until it became firm and then attempted to roll out the dough for the crust.

Hells Bells if it didnt become cream again. I manhandled that dough till it began to behave itself and finally attached it bit by bit to the top of the pie. Back it went In the oven again for 20 minutes. It was nicely cooked but white as a sheet. Must have been the violent treatment it got at my hands.

In desperation I brushed some water on the top and finished it under the grill. Five minutes and it came out a nice brown.
Now it looked just about acceptable. But - it tasted delicious! The insides were runny and yummy and the crust was crisp and altogether wonderful.

I left the lemon zest out as the mango was tart enough and using the palm sugar gave it a great flavour.
Thanks for the inspiration Eggbeater.
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A thought: one sliced mango instead of the milk in the filling and the consistency will probably be a bit firmer. Plus the pie could be cut into neater slices.