Month: October 2021

This blogpost will mainly be focusing on Diwali with the food as a side thought. Diwali is next week and ICLC is hosting a celebration on November 6th. You can sign up to join in the hub at the stand near Panda Express.

Diwali, or Deepavali, a Sanskrit word meaning “rows of lighted lamps,” is a Hindu-originated festival celebrated in India and by the Indian diaspora. During the five-day celebration — also known as the “festival of lights” — clay lamps known as diyas are lit to signify the victory of good over evil. Over time, Diwali has become a national festival marked by most Indians regardless of faith, with Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs also celebrating. Diwali also celebrates the goddess of wealth and prosperity, Lakshmi. Some believe it falls on her birthday and the day she married Lord Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation.

Hindus interpret the Diwali story based on where they live. In northern India, they mark the story of King Rama’s return to Ayodhya after he defeated Ravana by lighting rows of clay lamps. In southern India, people celebrate it as the day Lord Krishna defeated the demon Narakasura. In western India, the festival marks the day Lord Vishnu, one of the main gods of the Hindu trinity, sent the demon King Bali to rule the nether world. Meanwhile, in Jainism it marks the nirvana or spiritual awakening of Lord Mahavira . And for Sikhs, it celebrates the day a major guru was freed from imprisonment. More of the differences can be found here.

The most prominent of these stories is the King Rama story. Diwali is the day Lord Rama, his wife Sita Devi, and brother Lakshmana return to their homeland after 14 years in exile. The villagers lit a path for Rama, who had defeated the demon king Ravana with diyas. The general theme behind the story is the same with the Lord Krishna story. More can be learned about Diwali here.

 

Diwali is a five day festival with the second day being the day of giving and sharing sweets. Many people visit friends and family on this day and take sweets with them as gifts. Some will send cards to loved ones who they cannot celebrate with in person and often attach a box of confectionery. Some of the most common sweets to be eaten during this time are many that I have already spoken about in previous blog posts. Hulwa, laddu, Gulab Jamun, Kaju Katli, are all sold and given throughout this festival. All the different foods and sweets that can be found throughout Diwali can be found here. All of those sweets can be eaten throughout the the year, but there is one sweet that is only eaten at this time of year, gughara/gujiya. But that will be the topic of next weeks blogpost.

This blog will be a bit different due to the Hindu festival Diwali coming up in a few weeks. I decided to focus more on Ganesh Chaturthi as a build up to talking about Diwali. While I will still be talking about the sweet it will more of a build up talking about what types of sweets are offered at festivals and some of the mythology behind the festivals.

The Hindu god Ganesh is said to have had the head of and Elephant, although he was not always this way. He is the son of the Shiva, the destroyer(also a Hindu god), and Parvathi, the mother goddess. He was not born to Parvati as humans are. It is said that she was lonely. Shiva was away as was often the case. In her loneliness it appears  she decided to create a child by forming him, Ganesh, through molding a substantial accumulation of her body dirt. And so Ganesh was born and Parvati was happy and occupied. The story goes that one day, while Parvati was having a bath, Shiva came home. When he attempted to enter the house though, he was met with resistance in the form of the boy Ganesh. Neither of them knew they were related. Shiva got angry at not being allowed in and dealt with the situation by chopping off Ganesh’s head. It was at this moment that Parvati came out to find what Shiva had done. She was inconsolable but managed to tell Shiva that the boy whose head he had cut off was in fact his son. Angry at the situation, Shiva decided to fix it. He went out and hunted the first animal he saw, the elephant, and brought back its head to replace the boy’s. That day on the Hindu lunar calendar is known as Ganesh Chaturthi, the birthday of Ganesh, and is celebrated with parades and festivals lasting for weeks. On that day there are two types of sweets offered to Ganesh, laddu and peda. Those two sweets are offered to him because they are the sweets that humans have noticed that Elephants like eating, and thus over the years they became known as Ganesh’s favorite.

Peda or pera is a sweet dish hailing from the Indian subcontinent. It originated from Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India. Usually prepared in thick, semi-soft pieces, its main ingredients are khoa, sugar and traditional flavorings including cardamom seeds, pistachio nuts and saffron. There are many types of Peda, but the one that Ganesh likes is known as kesar modak peda, and is made of Mawa (milk solids) and sugar, flavored with cardamom and kesar (saffron) and shaped in to modak (dumplings). A recipe can be found here. No offering to Ganesh would be complete without the sweet and it is given to those who go to temples all over the world as a sweet to eat. There is a lot of cultural significance to the peda and no Ganesh Chaturthi would be complete without it.

 

Next week will be the beginning of talking about diwali and the foods involved.

 

In Hinduism gods are not all powerful. They are not exactly human, and they perform insane feats. There is an Hindu god known as Krishna. He is worshipped as the eighth avatar of Vishnu, the god of preservation, also as the supreme God in his own right. He is the god of protection, compassion, tenderness, and love and is one of the most popular and widely revered among Indian divinities, but he was not very dignified. The stories say that he was extremely mischievous and was always plotting something. As a child he would break into the cow pens and steal butter, his favorite food. They call him “Makhan Chour” or butter thief. But other than butter he would also steal kheer. He would sneak into the houses of those making kheer and steal the kheer.

In many cultures rice pudding would often show up in the culture when rice arrived to the area. Kheer is the Indian equivalent to rice pudding. The first mention of kheer, which historians say was derived from the Sanskrit word kshirika (meaning a dish prepared with milk), is found in the fourteenth century Padmavat of Gugarat, not as a rice pudding but a sweet preparation of jowar and milk. Back then using millets in pudding was quite common. Although that is the first official mention of kheer, it has been proven that kheer was a part of the ancient Indian diet, thanks to its being mentioned in ayurvedic medicines, and the fact that rice arrived in India much before it did in Europe and India’s neighbors, who were introduced to rice courtesy the Arabs and the Spice Route much later, very little is known as to when the first kheer was prepared or its story of origin (A basic history can be found here).

At it’s core Kheer is essentially rice pudding with spices, but do not let that similarity deceive you. Kheer is one of the most unique desserts in India. Opposite to the rest of the sweets I have covered, Kheer is more popular in South India than it is in North India, and like with everything else in India there is a lot of variety. There are a great variety of kheer recipes. You can replace rice with grains, fruits, vegetables, millets, quinoa, vermicelli, etcetera to make this dessert. The most popular form of this dessert is the rice version, a recipe of which can be found here. I personally have not tried many versions of kheer besides the rice version, but I would recommend trying at least that version.

On the bustling streets of Kolkata, India, there was one business man prepared to leave his mark on history. Krishna Chandra (KC) Das wanted to make sure whatever he made, and his name, would be remembered throughout the ages. His father had left him a factory and with hese resources he knew he could make his mark His invention would become one of the most recognizable and .popular Indian sweets. What did he invent? KC das invented what would come to be known as ras malai.

 

Although it is up for debate whether or not KC das did invent ras malai , his grand children claim that he most definitely did(here).  One thing is for certain however, KC das did at least come up with a method for canning ras malai, in 1930, and selling it to the rest of India through his confectionery shop at Jorasanko with his youngest son Sarada Charan Das. The main reason for the sweet becoming extremely popular at the time as it was the only canned sweet produced at the time. For KC das, the success of his invention would catapault his name into history. Krishna Chandra died within four years of the opening of the company, leaving the affairs of the company in the able hands of Sarada Charan. His company still stands today and is thriving as K.C. Das Private Limited.

 

Ras malai is a popular Indian dessert consisting of white cream, sugar, milk, and cardamom-flavored paneer cheese known as chhana. Almonds, cashews, and saffron are often added to the dessert. Ras malai is of West Bengali(a region in east India) origins, and is sometimes described as a rich cheesecake without a crust. It is eaten all over India, mostly gotten from sweet shops and halwai, an Indian casted known for making sweets(more info on the caste found here). The name of the dessert is a combination of two Hindi words, ras, meaning juice, and malai, meaning cream. It is typically served chilled and garnished with cardamom seeds or dried fruits. This delicious dessert is most popular during the festivals such as Holi and Diwali. Although it is hard to describe the rich, creamy, and sweet taste on the palate when eating a spoonful of ras malai, the taste and texture can best be described as light and spongy, spiced with cardamom and aromatic saffron. This sweet specifically does not have many variations around the Indian subcontinent, so recipes tend to be pretty standard. One of the most popular ones can be found here.

 

Ras malai is one of the most popular sweets on the Indian subcontinent. It can be found at nearly every restaurant in both North and South India. It all started as one mans quest to make his mark on history.

In the olden world there was a few countries far ahead of the medicine bell curve than the rest of the world. All throughout ancient Asia they used traditional forms of medicine, more of which can be learned about here. Instead of blood letting and religious zealotry, ancient India used natural herbs and ayurvedic medicines, an exaple of which is pictured above. Many historians believe that this era of herbal medicines began with the Surgeon Sushruta anywhere from 500 BCE to 300 BCE. This is where the popular origin story of the Laddu comes from. It is said Sushruta, used Laddu to give ayurvedic medicines to his patients. The sweet balls helped him manage the dose and also made it easier for the patients to consume. Some types were laddu were used as a medicine too. Like til ke laddu, made with sesame seeds, jaggery (cane sugar) and peanuts come with its own unique benefits.

Laddu is a soft round sweet originating in ancient India with many debates on how it came to be. There are many different types of laddu, but the biggest thing they have in common is that they are all sweets/desserts, an not forms of medicine. Although some will laud the health benefits of Laddu, it is a highly debated subject and there is likely no other benefit other than placebo itself. Laddu itself are soft, round balls, made mainly with gram flour, sugar, and spices. The details of the ingredients themselves can not be specified because the sweet has many different forms.

 

Likely the most popular form of Laddu, besan ke Laddu, is gram flour or besan roasted with ghee in a kadhai(a type of cooking pot), flavored with sugar and cardamom and shaped into tight round balls, decorated with almonds and pistachios. Besan ka ladoo is an Indian dessert usually made during festive times. If stored well, besan ke ladoo has a long shelf life so you can relish them for many days. A version more popular in southern India, Ragi Coconut Ladoo, is nutritionally rich due to the high protein and mineral value present in its main ingredient, ragi. Ragi is an annual herbaceous plant widely grown as a cereal crop in the arid and semiarid areas in Africa and Asia(source). Other than ragi, the obvious difference between the two is that the Ragi based one contains coconut, a staple of south Indian cooking, while the besan based one has besan, which is much more common in North India. Differences in the sweet hae cropped up thoughout the various regions due to what is readily available. A much more comprehensive list of types of Laddu with recipes can be found here.