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Pony: Chris' Burfi Recipe
1.27.2004
This entry was written by Chris, spurred by Tanya's request:
In India last winter, if there were sweets, I wanted them. I could spot sweets shops at a hundred yards, in hazy heat, through choking diesel, beyond the cacophony of crowds and traffic. The glass cases held trays of barfi and sandesh and laddu, glistening in syrup, flecked with edible silver or spotted with vivid dyes. There were milky-dense and spicy-sweet diamonds and spongy soft honey-soaked spheres. So, so good.
Here's a recipe for cashew barfi:
Slowly, on a low heat, dry roast 3 1/3 cups of raw cashew nuts in a heavy-bottomed pan until browned all over. When they cool and chop them really fine in a food processor. Remove the seeds from 6 cardamom pods and crush them with a pestle and mortar. Put waxed paper in a 10 x 7 baking pan. Dry mix 2 cups of powdered milk (the creamy, Indian kind) into the ground cashews, and rub 2 tablespoons of ghee into the mixture with your fingers. Stir in 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves and the ground cardamom.
In a heavy-bottomed sauce-pan, stir 3/4 cup of sugar into one cup of water and bring it to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and stir for 5-7 minutes to make a sugar syrup. Quickly stir the syrup into the cashew mixture (it gets stiff if you leave it too long) and spread the mixture onto the baking pan, so it's about 5/8 inch thick (It'll be like dense fudge) You can put edible silver leaf on top, if you want. Let it cool, and slice it into diamond shapes. Eat 'em!
