Famous in India and Bengladesh, Ras Malai is a desert made of Ras (sweet milk sauce) and Malai (clotted cream with cardamom).
You can find the original recipe here
Ras Malai
Monthly Archives: January 2017
Gyoza — Japanese dumplings
Almost every country has its own version of dumplings (raviolis, pierogi, varenyky, momo, knödel, ….).
This time, I tried the Japanese version, the Gyōza (Wikipedia), fried dumpling filled with veggies and meat.
I got some issues closing the dumpling due to the moisture of my garnish preparation, they were delicious though.
Ingredients
Dough
- 200g of regular flour
- 2 tbsp of sesame oil
- 250mL of warm water
Garnish
- 100g of minced meat
- 100g of prawns
- 4 heads of spring onion
- 4 heads of garlic
- small piece of ginger
- 2 eggs
- a small leek
- sesame oil
Dipping sauce
- Soy sauce
- Rice vinegar
Preparation
The dough
Put all the ingredients in a big bowl and start mixing them until you get an homogeneous dough. Shape it as a ball and put it in the fridge.
The garnish
Mince the leek, the garlic and grate the ginger equally in two different bowls.
Cut the prawns in small pieces and mix them with your hands in one of the bowls. Do the same with the minced meat in the other one.
Add one egg in each bowl and mix again with your hands 🙂
The dumplings
Stretch the dough with a rolling pin in order to obtain a thin layer of 1-2mm.
Using a large biscuit cutter or a glass of water (around ø 8-10mm), cut the dough into circles.
Close the dumplings by joining opposite extremities (dip a finger in the water if needed to make them sticky) and get a half moon shape.
Put the meat/prawn mixture in the centre of each circle
Fold the closing part in order to make some pleats.
The cooking
Pour some sesame oil in a pan and start frying the dumplings on one side.
Once they get brownish, pour boiling water until half of the dumpling.
Close the pan with a lid and let them cook in steam.
Serve the Gyoza, grilled side up with some soy sauce mixed with rice vinegar.
Sources of inspiration
Halwa e Zardak — Afghani desert
Desert from Afghanistan, sweet carrot pudding, “un délice!”.
Time
Preparation: 30 mins | Cooking: 3 to 6 h
Ingredients
- 1 kg of carrots
- 300 mL of milk
- 50g of butter
- 125g of sugar
- 50g of raisins
- a dozen of cardamom pods
- 50g of pistachios
- 50g of almond powder
Preparation
Cooking the carrots
Peel and grate the carrots as thin as possible then squeeze them to remove the moisture.
Start to melt the butter in a thick pot and fry the carrots for about 5 mins at high temperature.
Once they start to turn a little bit gold, add the milk and the sugar and decrease the temperature.
Cover the pot and let the carrot cook for 3 to 6 hours.
Adding the garnish
Put a table spoon of oil in a frying pan at medium temperature.
Add the raisins and fry them until they start to increase in size.
Add the pistachios and the almond powder and keep frying at low temperature for 5 mins.
In the mean time, crush the cardamom with a wood pestle.
Mix everything from the frying pan in the carrot pot and keep heating for 5 mins.
Add the cardamom in the preparation and stop heating.
The desert is better eaten warmed up.
