Sheera Bhaat or Kesari

Square Meals has been around for a few months now. Aparna and I decided it was time for us to take the blog to the next level and opened our Facebook page a few days ago. As one of the prerequisites for opening a page, we invited our friends to become a part of our culinary experience. Thank you all for the amazing responses and we hope to serve you all with healthy and tongue tingling recipes.

This recipe is dedicated to Yeshi Khando Lama, a dear friend of ours. Yeshi, who has been eating the ready-to-eat version of this recipe until now, had asked us for this recipe a couple days ago. 

Yeshi, here’s the recipe for Sheera Bhaat or the popularly called Kesari.

Ingredients

Rava (semolina) – 1 cup

Sugar – 11/2 cups

Water – 3 cups

Ghee – 5 tbsp

Cashews – 2 tbsp

Raisins – 2 tbsp

Cardamom – a pinch

Food color – orange or yellow (optional)

Saffron – a pinch

Method

Heat 1 tbsp of ghee in a pan. Fry the cashews and remove from stove. Repeat the process for raisins and keep the cashews and raisins aside. Add another tbsp of ghee and roast the rava until it turns slightly brown and emits a nice aroma. Remove from stove.

Soak saffron strands in 1 tbsp of milk or water. Boil 3 cups of water in a pan. When the water starts to boil nicely, add food colour (optional) and the soaked saffron syrup. Add the roasted rava slowly and stir well.

Stir continuously and make sure no lump is formed. Cook the rava well on medium flame. Once rava is cooked well, add the sugar and mix well. The sugar will dissolve and blend with the rava.

Add the remaining ghee and cardamom powder. Stir continuously until the rava starts to leave the sides of the pan. Remove from stove and add the fried cashews and raisins.

Serve hot sojji (Kesari) with bajji – the typical bride-viewing tiffin in South India :-)

Please check out http://www.4shared.com/document/PNOIRWs9/Leftover_food_recipes-_ebook.html where two of our recipes have been presented.