Carrot Halwa | Gajar ka Halwa | 100th post

What occasion is it? Yes, my 100the post! Yaaaaaay :-)! When I started this blog, I did set a goal to get to a 100 before the end of this year and I am very happy I kept at this. And frankly the 90s have been difficult. Now I understand why the Master-blaster Sachin Tendulkar struggled to get to a 100 centuries ;). Okay, now thats a little too much, the anology, I know ;)

Its been nothing but an enjoyable 10 months obsessing over this blog. Its become so much a part of my life and surely will continue to be so. Thanks to all of you who have been visiting, trying recipes from here and giving me feedback, that's one of the key things that pushes this blog forward. Please continue to do so :).

I also have one more update here, foodoverip has moved to its own custom domain www.thefoodoverip.com. If you happen to use the blog-spot suffix, you will be re-directed to www.thefoodoverip.com

To celebrate the 100th post, I made a classic winter dessert - Carrot halwa, popularly known as Gajar Ka Halwa. Winter is peeking into Mumbai and that means lush red winter carrots. These are the carrots that are traditionally used to make gajar halwa as against the orange colored carrots. S loves gajar halwa, and hes been at me for almost a year now to use these red carrots for making Carrot Halwa. I never got around to do it until today when he went shoping alone and dumped on me a bag of these winter carrots. And so the carrot halwa was re-born in my kitchen :)

I am not even going to start to say how yum and delicious they were, you just have to try it out yourself :-)

Ingredients

Serves - 4
Prep Time - 15 min
Cook time - 1 hr

Carrots - 1 Kg [approx 10 carrots] - Grated
Milk - 2.5 cups mixed with 1/4 cup water
Sugar - 3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp
Elachi powder - 1 generous pinch
Ghee - 4 Tbsp
Cashews - 10
Raisins - 5-6

How do you do it

1. Heat a tsp of ghee in a heavy/thick base non stick pan. Fry the cashews and raisins and set aside.

2. Add 1 more tbsp of ghee to the pan. Add the grated carrot and saute for 2-3 minutes until they turn a lighter shade. This to get rid of the rawness of the carrot.

3. Once done, add the milk into the pan and bring to boil. Then reduce the flame to medium, close with a lid, and let the carrots get cooked in the milk. This is going to take some time. It takes close to 30 minutes for the carrots to get softer/mashed and for the milk to reduce. Keep stirring now then during the 30 minutes.

4. Once almost most of the milk has been absorbed by the carrots, add the elachi powder, sugar , remaining ghee and stir it in. Once done, the carrots mixture will tend to loosen again. Let it again cook for another 15 minutes until the halwa starts to leave the sides of the pan. Add the cashews and raisins now and mix it well.

Serve this warm carrot halwa with a scoop of ice-cream. Yum!