Halva Puri With The Gori Wife

In M's family, they don't really eat much of a breakfast. Normally, they eat some kind of leftovers from the night before - there's no real distinction between breakfast-y food and dishes that would be served at lunch or dinner. Sometimes they would eat a fried egg with paratha or tea, and recently they've been introduced to the greatness of cold cereal, but I mean more traditionally...

There is one last bastion of breakfastness there, though. The Havla Puri. Halva can mean any one of a variety of sweet dishes, made from carrots or chickpeas or, like the one I made yesterday, from farina (also known as cream of wheat or sooji.) Puri is a simple, thin, white, oily flatbread. Oily because the bread is DEEP FRIED. This bread & sweetdish is accompanied by lots of different traditional breakfast-y things, but I like to make Chole and potato bhaji.

AND! I'm going to share my mother-in-law's sacred recipes with you so that you, too can eat this very unhealthy breakfast - after spending hours preparing it - and then nap all day.

First, you can make your channa - or chickpea curry - first. My MIL doesn't have a recipe for this, but through trial and error I found this one online. It's a very complicated recipe that requires you to use three different pans. I usually skip the first step entirely because I don't see what the point of that step, so I only dirty two pots. I also cook it a little longer at the end because I prefer the tomatoes to be a little more broken down. 

Next, you can work on your Potato Bhaji. Bhaji means any kind of cooked vegetable dish. This one only has potatoes, and a lot of weird spices that most non-desi cooks wouldn't have in their pantries. If you decide to stock up your pantry with Pakistani spices, you have to find a good Indian/Pakistani grocery store. It's usually impossible to find these spices in regular grocery stores, and when you do they cost an arm and a leg.

Potato Bhaji

Cut 2 large potatoes in half lengthwise, then cut into 1/4 inch slices. Heat up 3 Tbs. oil in a large pot and add 1/2 tsp. Kalonji (Onion seed), 1 Tbs. sabut dhuniay (corriander seed), and 1Tbs. saunf (fennel seed) into the oil. Then add the sliced potato and enough water to halfway cover the potatoes. Before the potatoes are cooked though, add 1/4-1/2 tsp. of crushed red chili (the kind in the shakers at a pizza place,) 1/4 tsp. of turmeric powder and salt to taste and stir everything up. Cover and cook on low-medium heat until the potato is cooked through, but hopefully the pieces aren't breaking apart. (Mine always seem to, though.) At the end, you can add a little bit of tamarind for some sourness. Tamarind is hard to find, though.

You have to make the Puri next. The recipe is really easy - it's just a simple dough. You make little balls and roll them out as thin as you possibly can using only oil. You can't flour your surface to roll them out because the flour would brown when they're cooking, and puri is supposed to be pretty white. The trick is to oil your rolling pin and counter just a little bit. Also, it doesn't matter if they roll out pretty, or if they end up looking like the various American states instead of perfect circles. If they pull or tear or fold up on each other when you're trying to transfer into the frying pan - the hot oil will cure any of that. You fry them only for a very little bit, you don't even really want them to change color much. Then you stack them all up in a dish that's got some newspaper of paper towels at the bottom, and cover it to keep them hot. They end up sticking together and you have to peel one off the top. Mmm. I'm getting hungry all over again!

Poori
1. Add 1 part atta (whole wheat flour) to 3 parts maida (white flour) 2. Add salt to taste and 2 Tbs. oil 3. Mix into a hard dough, and knead for 2 minutes. Put about an inch of oil into a wok and heat on medium-high heat. 4. Separate into 1-1.5 inch balls and roll each out at thin as you can. Really, really, insanely thin. My husband and I usually roll/fry as a team so that one of us is rolling out the next one to be fried. Otherwise, you should roll out a few because frying them is very quick, and you don't want your oil to get too hot in between each one. 5. Fry each one for just a little bit - you don't even really want it to change color, although I prefer just the tiniest bit of golden color. 

Lastly, you make your halva. It's last because it have to be served hot, and it can't sit around for long without congealing into a halva loaf instead. 

Halva

1. Heat 1/2 stick of butter in a pan 2. A 2-3 1 inch pieces of Cinnamon stick, 8-12 cloves, 6-8 small cardamom seeds, and a handful of raisins(optional) to the oil and cook until the butter starts to brown. I like the butter to start to brown because otherwise the end product looks kind of pasty. It needs to have a little color to it! 3. As soon as the butter has browned and gotten infused with all those wonderful spices, add in 3/4 cup of farina (sooji) and about an equal amount of sugar. You can use less if you like your halva less sweet, and you can always add more sugar later if you want.  4. My MIL adds 1 Tbs. ground coconut, but I don't. 5. Cook the sooji and sugar while stirring continuously for a few minutes. 6. Add 1.5 cups of water. Stand back because the pan and sooji are very hot, and there will be a lot of steam! Try to stir constantly, and it's okay if it seems like some of the sooji/sugar has stuck to the bottom. It's really just the sugar reacting to the water, and it will be boiled/stirred away. 7. Keep cooking until it's the consistency you want and it's cooked through. You might have to taste it to see, and you can add more water if it's getting too thick. It's supposed to be a pretty thick gloppy porridge kind of thing.  8. When it's done, add rose water (kewra) to taste, stir, and serve hot! My MIL adds some food color, and in restaurants here it's sometimes bright orange, but I don't usually add any food coloring. It's up to you.

I'll take pictures the next time I cook something for you guys! Sorry the recipes aren't formatted properly. I just cut and pasted (and proofread!) the emails my in-laws had sent me. If only I'd married into a family of cookbook editors, but alas, you will all just have to make do.