Coconut Ice

Yet another Goan sweet, that also finds its way to the table for Christmas, Coconut Ice. The Chef says that it used to be called the Coconut Cordial though it seems this is a liquid drink now days, anyone can shed some light on this? Was the coconut the Goan coconut cordial?

Like all Goan sweets, there are two main ingredients that go into making it, Patience and Love. The slower the flame, the tastier the sweet :) Lets see what goes into making this delicacy.

Coconut Ice Main Ingredients:



1 Cup Soji/Rava/Semolina
1 Cup Milk
Less than a Cup of Ghee
200 - 220 Gms Scrapped Coconut
2 & 1/2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup Ground Cashews
1 Table Spoon Butter
1 Tea Spoon Both Almond & Coconut Essence
Small Quantity of Cochineal or Red Colour



Procedure:

All the main ingredients have to be mixed together, you start off by heating the ghee and rava.


Make sure your flames on the lowest possible flame, add the sugar and ground cashew to the coconut ice mixture as well.

You can either do this step earlier, thats grind the coconut and milk together to get coconut milk.

Once your coconut milks ready you can add it to the mixture.


Now comes an essential part in most Goan sweets, stirring on a slow flame. Fast flames never get the desired result, patience is the key.

Keep Stirring the mixture, soon you shall see all the ingredients fusing together.

It changes texture and looks like what it does in the picture below.

Its not yet close to done, so change your stirring hand and go on.

As it thickens the stirring gets tougher, but its a good sign, the sweet is getting done.Once you notice the sweet beginning to leave the sides of the dish, its time for you to add the cochineal or red colour.

The trick to getting the right colour is to always add less, on adding more you cant get the colour you want back if you put in too much.

Once you add the colour, stir it to check and see if its enough.Add some more if the colours too pale.

Once thats done add the tablespoon of butter don't forget that you still need stir it a little more.Check the consistency in water, you pour some normal room temperature in a small bowl.
Add a small ball of the mixture in it, if it hardens your Coconut Ice is ready.
If the ball is soft, it still needs to be cooked for some more time.
Add the almond and coconut extract at this time, and remove the mixture from the dish.

You need to place the mixture on a greased surface, we use the granite platform itself, since its stone its cooler enabling faster cooling of the dish.

Once its out, flatten it, first with your hand and then with a baton to get an even surface.

Make sure its got the right thickness as well, that you would like.
Give it a little time for it too cool off and once thats done you can now cut your coconut ice.

We cut it into simple diamond shapes, which we have for other sweets as well.
Heres some of the coconut ice all cut up.

All the best with your Coconut Ice, I'm sure this coconut ice recipe will help you turn out another delicious goan special.

Channa Doss

Channa Doss is a Goan sweet that requires very few ingredients but lot of patience and tremendous amount of stirring. Its fairly easy to make and the end result is one of the simplist sweets that still ends up getting consumed too soon.

Prior to starting let we warn you that its a tough one, family support is a boon when it comes to stirring. Enjoy this Christmas this with some Chonache Doss.


Doss Ingredients:

1 Cup Bengal Gram Dal
1 and a half cup scraped coconut
1 Cup Sugar
6 Pods of Cardamoms (Elaichi)
Ghee
Pinch of Salt
Measure of the first three ingredients should be the same

Procedure:

Soak and Cook the Gram dal, then Grind the Gram and Coconut.
Once thats done, add 2 tablespoon of ghee to the vessel and heat it up. Add the ground channa dal and coconut first and start mixing them.
Once its mixed properly add sugar.
Blend the ingredients.
Now the stirring starts to mix all the three ingredients properly into a thick lump.
After stirring for a few minutes it turns slightly brown. Keep stirring.
When the mix begins to thicken add a pinch of salt to it. Continue to blend, and you will notice the difference in the mix. If it gets difficult to stir, it means you are doing a good job and your Doss will turn out to be perfect.
That also means you have to eep stirring. Add crushed elaichi to the mixture and stir again. The mixture collects together, so 2 tablespoons of ghee makes it a bit easier to stir. Keep the Doss mixture on the flame for a while, and don't forget to stir it regularly. After 25-30 minutes, stirring would become extremely difficult as the mixture solidifies. Stir some more and then its time to remove the doss off the fire. Flatten the mixture with a spatula on a greased plate. You can use your hands as well to spread the mixture across the plate evenly. Smoothen the edges. Use a fork to make some design on the edges. This is how Doss would look. Wait for it to cool down.
Cut diamond shape pieces and Channa Doss is ready. Sometimes the Doss takes longer to harden and get the right whitish colour, so you can leave it overnight to dry and then serve. The above doss could have been on the fire for ten more minutes before taking off.

Goan Christmas Sweets Special

Yes its that time of the year again, where we clean up our houses, put out our decorations and most importantly make all those lovely Christmas sweets. Here you shall have all the Goan Christmas Sweet Recipes laid out for you to choose!

Perad, Guava Jam or Cheese

Perad is a another well known Goan delicacy that serves two purposes, it can be eaten for breakfast on toast when it is not fully cooked or as a dessert when fully cooked. This recipe is the thick dark red Goan Perad.

Walnut Drops

This recipe was thought to my mother forty years ago, when she was in her 10th grade by her teacher. She never really made these sweets until much later on in her life, now its an every year Christmas Special that sells like hotcakes.

Milk Cream for a White Christmas

This is another yummy, easy to do, requires a lot of stirring not too many ingredients. I have been away from home for a while, I had some of these pictures with me so I decided to put this recipe up.

Bibinca Goa's Favorite Dessert

Bibinca, the multi layered Goan cake, that can be eaten at any time of the day. Put it in your chapatis and have it for breakfast, with ice cream or alone as a dessert, whichever way you like it.

A Simple Chocolate Fudge

Chocolate fudge also known as a Refrigerated Chocolate Cake, its an easy to do recipe that tastes yummy as a dessert especially when its complimented with some Vanilla ice cream. It has a tinge of rum and can also be converted in to a flambe.

Bolinhas the Teatime Treat

Bolinhas, a teatime coconut delight that is easy and quick to make. The end result is a soft, tasty Bolinha that crumbles in your mouth.

Bolinhas the Teatime Treat

Bolinhas, another teatime delight that can double up as something special on your table's Christmas Offerings. Easy to do, the procedure is not time consuming but would be better if you can leave part mixture overnight.

The end result is a soft, tasty Bolinha that crumbles in your mouth and as always leaving you with the desire to have one more :)

Bolinhas Ingredients:

1 Medium Sized Coconut
1/4 Kg Rawa
1/4 Kg Sugar
1 Tbsp Ghee
3 Tbsp spoons Maida
1 Leveled Tsp Baking Powder
3 Eggs
Few Elaichi
1 Pinch Salt

Procedure:

Make a sugar syrup by heating the sugar in 1/2 a cup of water.While the sugar is melting on a slow flame, grind the coconut in 1/4th cup of water.Once the coconut is ground, stir the sugar that should have nearly dissolved by now.Add the Rawa to the sugar syrup and mis this up as well.Add the ground coconut to this mixture, mix it up and add the pinch of salt.Now add the Ghee and keep stirring it,Until it all becomes one nice blend.You can store the above mixture either overnight, for six hours or do it instantly. Its best you store it for a few hours and then proceed recommends the chef!

Once you stir it up, you can take the mixture off the fire.Out of the three eggs only add the the yokes, though it can be done with the entire egg as well. Remember to keep the egg white of one egg aside, the other two you can can store.Then mix the yokes with the Bolinha mixture.Once thats done, clean and powder the Elaichi and add it to the mixture.Mix the Maida and Baking powder,Add it to the Bolinha mix,
And stir it up again.Now beat the one egg white till its fluffy..Add it to the Bolinha mixture, thats the final ingredient to the Bolinha dough.So now that the doughs ready you can now get ready to bake.So now you need to shape your Bolinhas, take a ball out of the dough.With the help of some flour shape it as you would do to a cutlet.Flatten the top of it an next get a butter knife to press a few lines into the dought to make a design.You can make diamonds like these below quite easily and they do look better after baking.As you finish them place them on your baking tray, that you have greased with a little Ghee.So place all the Bolinhas on the tray at a little distance from each other.Put them in the oven with the base heat on.Leave it on for around twenty minutes, and then check and see if the base is firm by moving a Bolinha on the tray.If its cooked, switch over to top heat and bake till the top gets brown.Once your satisfied with the colour, its time to get them out of the oven and give yourself a special Christmas teatime treat!Some people also call these the goan cookies or goan biscuits, Bolinhas are pronounced as bolinyas.

Prawn Rissoles

Today we have an authentic recipe handed down straight from the Portuguese while they were in our beloved Goa! Its called the Prawn Rissole, pronounced as Rissoee its a mouth watering appetizer, that melts in your mouth!

There are two steps involved in the Prawn Rissole Recipe, first is to make the stuffing that's put inside the rissole. Is possible to make it with even ham, corned beef or anything else you think will go well, but this Rissole is with prawns.


Prawn Rissole Stuffing:

White sauce and prawns

Prawn Rissole Stuffing Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Milk
3 Teaspoons maida
1 Heaped Tsp Butter
1/2 Cup boiled prawns
Salt, Pepper and Cheese to taste
A dash of Nutmeg

Make a white sauce using the butter, maida & milk. Add the milk and butter on the fire, when warm add the maida slowly and stir continuously.


Clean and boil the prawns and keep them aside.

Add the salt, peeper and the dash of grated nutmeg to the white sauce.

When the mixture thickens add the prawns and keep stirring.

Grated cheese is for the taste, this really depends on how much flavor and taste you want. Add the cheese and stir it up, it should all blend pretty well.


Once thats done keep it aside, its now time to make the dough that will act as the enclosing for the Rissole mixture.

Prawn Rissole Dough Ingredients:

1 Tipri Atta
1/2 Tipri Maida
8 Ozs Water
2 Teaspoons Ghee
1 Teaspoon Salt

Pour the water into the vessel and heat it up

Bring the water, salt and ghee to a boil.

Then add the flours to the water.

Keep stirring till it all mixes well.

Remove on flat surface and knead into a smooth dough.

Roll out the dough and cut into circles using the lid of a container or anything you think should work.

Once you have your circle ready place the filling in the center.

Fold the rissole and fix the end with water

Dip each of theses pattys in a beaten egg

Once thats done turn both of its sides in bread crumbs

Fry until golden brown.

This is your ready to eat Prawn Rissoles, I can taste that melting stuffing in my mouth as I write this, you guys are in for a treat!