Rich Sheer Khurma with Dry Fruits

Eid in Hyderabad is not complete without Sheer Khurma. After haleem and biryani, Shir Khurma overdose lingers on a little longer as it is continued to be served for days to come.

Legend has it that the recipe for sheer khurma was imported to India during the Mughal rule and has ever since been a part of the Dhakni culture and tradition. Sheer Khurma has nothing to do with religious practice. It is purely a regional tradition of making something sweet for the special occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr. Since dates are of special significance during the month of Ramzan, these are integrated in a creamy and tastier form on the day of Eid.

There are many names to this dish ranging from sevaiyyan, semiya, sheer qurma, semiya pudding, vermicelli pudding, and what not. Hyderabadis have always known it best as shir qurma. This dessert is made with equal frenzy and love in Pakistan and that is one thing I would love to taste.

Our grandparents once told us that the word shir was derived from the word shireen which meant sweetness and always stressed upon being shireen-zubaan (sweet language) in dire situations too. Eat sweet and speak sweet; that’s all I remember about the dish. I thought khurma meant gravy until Google clarified as dates aka khajoor.

A Festive Vermicelli Dessert made in India, Pakistan, Afganistan, and Bangladesh

Shopping for sheer qurma in this city is an event by itself. The moment the moon is sighted, the market reaches its highest crescendo. No matter how much you plan in advance and sort things out for the festival, there is always something that will make you step out into the festive air.

The energy is infectious. The traffic is horrible. The policemen are fretting and frantically swearing. Anywhere you turn to, there is vendor screaming at the top of his voice. You are partially deafened. And the pick-pockets are right beside-behind you.

But you still want to go out.

For there is no stopping you for that last experience of the frenzy that surrounds, for that last plate of haleem, maybe that last visit to the Charminar (even if there was nothing left to buy), the steaming hot chai, the shouts and screams, the jaw dropping discounts offered…. and all this while you or your loved one is trying to save the intricate mehendi on both hands from getting smudged. You don’t want to come back home soon for more work waits.

Dry fruits would be bought only from the friendly neighborhood dava-saaz ki dukaan for it was believed that they had the most authentic ingredients. Semiyan is picked up from the makeshift stalls along the road followed by fresh milk, chicken, mutton, veggies and so on for that rich biryani. Sometimes Khobani ka Meetha is also included in the festive menu.

You are quite lost and loving every moment till you remember what you had stepped out for. And that brings me back to the recipe for sheer khurma, the traditional Hyderabadi way.

My method of cooking is not measured so given below are nearest estimates. You will have to tweak the proportions to make it work for you. You can add or remove the quantity of ingredients to suit your taste and style. Some like it thick with more vermicelli and some prefer it milky. That is why most of the dry fruits and milk are served additionally, to customise the dish.

Dry Fruits for Dressing the Creamy Shir Khurma

Ingredients for making Sheer Khurma

• Pure Milk – 1 litre
• Sugar – 1 cup or as per taste
• Vermicelli – Semiyan – Sevaiyyan – 1/4kg
• Pure Ghee – ¼ kg (or just enough for frying the vermicelli into light golden brown)
• Cardamom – 3 pods.
• Dry Fruits such as almonds (badam), cashewnuts (kaju), raisins (kish mish), watermelon seeds (tarbooz ke beenj), musk melon seeds (kharbuze ke beenj), charoli (chironji), pistachios (pista), etc. Use what you like and as much as you want to for the final dressing.
• Dates – Dry or Raw, for dressing.

How to make Shir Qurma

1. Break the semiya into manageable size. Fry this vermicelli or semiya in a thick bottomed dish in ghee on medium-low flame. The color of the vermicelli should be light golden brown and even. Keep it aside.
2. Bring milk to boil and stir continuously to reduce the quantity. Add sugar, powdered cardamom and stir.
3. Add the semiya to the milk and stir for few minutes till it is soft and cooked. Don’t overcook.
4. Before serving, top it with the nuts, raisins, dates and maybe a speck of ghee.
5. Serve this as you like – hot, warm, room temp or chilled. Since it has ghee, it is better to avoid the colder version.

My Notes:

1. To make the dish creamier or tastier (we will never talk about calories here), you can take more milk and boil to reduce the quantity. Some recipes call for addition of condensed milk for shortcuts.
2. The nuts are generally prepared the previous day/ night. They are soaked for couple of hours to easily skin and sliver, before roasting.
3. The key to bringing out the flavor of nuts is to roast it right. All the nuts need to be roasted in low flame till they change their color and give out their flavored fragrance. Most people deep fry the nuts in the ghee and this works great too. Never over fry or darken the nuts.
4. In good old days, the dried dates would be soaked overnight to soften them. Now, with Mediterranean dates available in every nook and corner, the concept of soaking and waiting is over. Just buy, slice and garnish.
5. Personally, I like it with less sugar. It not only tastes good but is a welcome relief for most guests who are fully fed up with the sweet dish. The dates can be added for sweetness.
6. The cooking vessel needs to be thick-bottomed. This dish requires frequent stirring to ensure that nothing sticks to the bottom of the dish which eventually gives out the burnt smell. A No No.
7. Milk is the base for this dish. Get it as fresh and pure as possible. Toned or skimmed milk can take a hike.

Sheer Delight of Tasting the Rich and Creamy Sweet Sheer Qurma Dessert

This year, following Eid was Ganesh Chaturti which is equally festive in Hyderabad. The crowds take to streets for ten days. There is a lot of dazzle in the city at the moment. And shir kurma is still going strong.

The beauty of this dish is that it  is served to and is loved by one and all. What matter is the love that goes into making it for anyone who comes to your doorstep. Nothing rich or poor about it.

Let me know if you made this dish and have some interesting twists up your sleeve. The best one I read was about adding some orange zest to this creamy pudding. It sounds nice and contemporary. But I’d dig for the good ol semiyan any day.

Please leave your thoughts and ideas for me to tinker with.

Baked Vegetable Cutlet with Sprouts - Ready to go into the oven

A cup of tea is a must when it rains. Tea-time snack is much better when it pours. Here is a quick fix cutlet recipe, made with leftover sprouts and some vegetables. The best part about this snack is that it is totally veggie, tasty and guilt-free.

Ingredients for Sprouts and Vegetable Cutlet:

2 handful of mixed legume sprouts (soaked, fried or seasoned)
2 big potatoes (boiled, peeled, and partly mashed)
1 big onion (finely chopped)
1 hot chilli (finely chopped)
Salt, Chilli Powder, Chat Masala Powder (as per your taste)
Juice of 1 lemon
Handful of Coriander Leaves (chopped)
Cornflour, Wholewheat or poppy seeds (for final touch)

How to make Vegetable & Sprout Cutlet:

Mix all the ingredients above except the cornflour.
Fashion the sticky dough into any cutlet shape and roll each piece in the cornflour/ wholewheat.
Line baking tray with aluminium foil and grease it with little oil.
Place your cutlets leaving enough gap as the mixture spread during baking.
Brush your cutlets with little oil on the top.
Bake at 150-180 degrees centigrade for about 20-30 minutes, till done.
Enjoy.

Tea Time Snack - Vegetable & Sprout Cutlets

Whats so good about these cutlets?

Made in a jiffy. Does not need elaborate preparation.

Uses wholewheat for rolling the cutlets, instead of cornflour.

Unlike deep-fried ones, these require minimal oil.

And they taste so good that you cant stop at one.

If Pizza means getting one from Pizza Hut or Pizza Corner, then this one is not for you. Nothing compares to a good home made pizza, made with right ingredients, good pizza sauce and ofcourse, Love.

Farm Fresh Vegetables Topped on Home Made Pizza Sauce - Ready to go into the Oven

To make the best pizza you can, focus on three things: Fresh vegetables, good mozzarella cheese and good pizza sauce made with fresh tomatoes. What about the pizza base? It gets cooked anyway and if on wood-fired stone oven… nothing like it.

No pizza sauce recipe is written in stone. There are no hard and fast rules for making it as the ingredients and thier flavours differ from region to region. It is all about experimenting till the sauce tickles your taste buds right. Here is my current version of tomato sauce for pizza, which can also be used for making pasta.

Ingredients for a Good Pizza Sauce for the Base:

For starters, this is Stewed and Sweetened Apricots Served with Fresh Cream. But for old timers, it is an quintessential way to end a hearty and rich Hyderabadi meal – with Khobani Ka Meetha.

Hyderabadi Khobani Ka Meetha is made with Dried Apricots and is served with Fresh Cream

Call it Khobani, Qobani, Khubani, Qubani ka meetha or anything – it is one of the exotic desserts that should figure out in your ‘must try or rather die’ list. Orchardiers from India may claim that they have good apricots but the best ones come from remote areas of Afghanistan and they remain, till date, sinfully exotic.

Heirloom Recipe for Khobani Ka Meetha:
Dried Apricots – 1 Kg
Sugar – 500 gms
Juice of 1 Lemon
Fresh Cream for Serving

Soak the apricots in water overnight with just enough water to cover.
Boil the apricots in the same water.
Add sugar while boiling. The amount of sugar can be adjusted according to one’s taste. My personal preference is to lower the amount of sugar as it is already a rich fruit.
Add lemon juice. This makes the sugar’s impurities to float on top which can be spooned off and it also increases the shelf-life of the dessert.
Boil till the dry fruit becomes tender and can be squashed to one’s liking. Some like their apricots squashed to paste, while some prefer them whole and soft.
Keep the nutty seeds aside. Crack open the seed shells for obtaining small kernals. Add these kernals to the dessert before serving.

While it is a genreal practice to serve this exotic dessert with icecream or custard, it would be a better idea to stick to the original way to serving it with fresh cream.

Love cakes? Love to bake and eat? Love apples? Then it is time to bake the perfect apple cake. Even if you don’t like to eat apples, you will end up eating the cake for sure.

Apple Cake with Cinnamon is a classic coffee cake that looks great, tastes great and gives a good nutritional boost. I wonder if there is any other cake which is so delicious, healthy, wholesome and yummy at the same time. An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but a slice of an apple cake will definitely keep those blues away. The first time I tried making the apple cake, I was very skeptical of using apples in it and wondered about the final outcome. As the baking life went by, this cake reigns for it fills the stomach, satisfies the sweet-something craving, renders a spicy taste in the mouth, and gives the wholesome goodness of having eaten the right stuff instead of indulging in not-so healthy baked options.  I just love the heady scent of the apple cake with cinnamon being baked.

Diced apples in cinnamon cake batter

Here is the Standard Recipie for Apple Cake with Cinnamon Notes. I have my baking notes at the end of the recipie where I have introduced variations and made this cake tastier and healthier.

2 Cups Flour

1 Cup Sugar

¾ Cup Oil and a small dollop of butter

2-3 Eggs

3-4 Apples – Diced or sliced

2 tsp – Cinnamon (Freshly Ground)

½ tsp Salt (optional)

2 tsp Baking Powder

½ Cup Milk

To make your own perfect apple cake:

Grease baking dish with butter or oil and dust some flour on it. Set the oven to 170-180 degrees for 10 minutes.

Sieve flour, cinnamon powder, baking powder and salt.

Beat eggs (till fluffy), add sugar, butter and oil together.

Fold in the flour mixture. Use milk to ensure that the batter is smooth enough and sticks to the mixing spoon.

Add apple chunks. Pour the mixture in the greased baking dish. If you like, dust cinnamon on top.

Bake for half hour or till the done.

Healthy and Wholesome Teatime Apple Cake

My notes on baking the Perfect Apple Cinnamon Cake

• Don’t use a mixer or blender for the batter. Try to do it manually. Beat the eggs till fluffy, add other ingredients and so on. I don’t know and don’t care why, but the cakes turn out softer and seem to have a character of their own.
• Instead of refined flour/ maida/ self raising flour, opt for whole wheat flour as it gives the cake a nice texture while making it healthy and wholesome. For drama, I sometimes add 3 teaspoons of rolled oats or broken wheat grains.
• Sugar is any cake’s necessary nectar. But for the fresh apple cake, drastically reduce the sugar as the apples impart a good amount of sweetness to the cake. I like that applesque flavour to reign rather than biting into a sweet cake with a hint of apple. For the above recipie, I only use half cup of sugar. You can increase the amount of apples to make the mixture sweeter.
• Compared to butter, oil gives the cake a good texture, and consistency to the batter. Oil also keeps the cake moist later. Aim to use oil as a medium to make the batter better, instead of using it as a main ingredient. Throw in a little butter for no-compromise on taste.
• Salt is optional but I recommend its use as it brings out the best of the cinnamon. Moreover, I don’t like a cake that tastes only sweet, sweet and sweet all along. Milk or sour curd is an optional taste enhancer. Be experimental here.
• Apples – Diced/ sliced, crushed, or whatever – they are going to get cooked anyway. Keep the apple skin intact for it imparts good taste and a wonderful texture to the cake. Not to mention the goodness of those nutrients.
• Cinnamon – Always try to grind it just before making the cake. There is a world of difference in using packed cinnamon powder and freshly grinding it. If you are fond of that spicy flavour and scent, be generous in sprinkling cinnamon in and on your cake.
• I do not use any icing or topping for the cake itself is tasty and does not need embellishment.

It is not now time for you to bake and let me know how it went. If you do any interesting variations, let me know. I will try it out too