The Bengali dessert you need to try
Bangladeshi cuisine is rich with curry, spices and sweetmeats. Bengali people like to have a three course meal with different side dishes each course and end it with a sweet delight. Among the sweets can find various “Pitha” , “Halua” , “Mishtis”. It’s always a pleasure to have mouthful sweet dish after a savory meal. It just complete the meal and give us satisfaction. One sweet dessert which is my favorite among all these sweet dish is “Gajar er Halua”. Being a Bangladeshi and having Bengali cuisine I've always like this dessert made by my Mom with love. Gajar er halua is also known as a carrot halwa. It is also very famous in Indian cuisine. In Indian cuisine it is called Gajar ka Halwa.
Gajar er halua is basically shredded carrots paired with ghee (clarified butter) , milk , cardamom and other spices if you want to put. It is served with different nuts like cashew nuts, almonds,pistachio. You can find these in various Indian sweetmeat store or Bengali sweetmeat store. But why go to store when you can make this dish at home easily within 20 minutes. Here’s a description of the recipe of ingredients and the method.
Ingredients:
The ingredients of this recipe is so simple. You just need just a few ingredients found in the kitchen easily to make this recipe. The ingredients are:
- 6 cups of finely chopped carrots
- 6 table spoon of ghee (clarified butter)
- 1 table spoon Elachi powder(Cardamom)
- 800 gm Condensed Milk
- 1 cup Milk Powder
- Cashew nuts, Almonds & Peanuts as per taste
With these few ingredients you can make this dish easily within 20 minutes.
Making process:
Before the cooking start you need 5/6 carrots to be finely chopped or shredded. Then take a pan pour in some ghee ( clarified butter ). Then put the 6 cups of finely chopped carrot into the ghee ( clarified butter) and mix it with the ghee properly, After mixing it fry the chopped carrots for 7 minutes. After cooking it for 7 minutes you will notice the volume of the chopped carrots will shrink a bit then pour in 800 gm of condensed milk into the mixture.Mix it well. After adding the condensed milk let it cook in it for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes you need to add 1 cup of powdered milk. It will help to give a nice texture to the halua. After mixing it well you need to add the Elachi (cardamom) powder in it. Then mix it well. After that let it sit for 2 minutes and voila that’s ready to serve.
You can serve it as you want. It pairs greatly with cashew, almonds and pistachio. So you can add it in to serve this dish.
You can watch this video as a guide.
This is a simple and basic way to cook this recipe. You can add more to this. You can add spices like elachi (cardamom), cinnamon stick , bay leaf to enrich the taste of this dish.
This dish is significant because this sweet dessert is made in many religious occasions to celebrate it. Like in Islam religion many significant occasion like Shab e barat, Eid ul Azha, Eid ul Fitra are celebrated by making this sweet dish and sharing it among the neighborhood. In Hindu religion their new year, diwali and many happy occasions are celebrated with this sweet dessert.
So i hope you will all try this must try dessert at home and enjoy this.
