Carrot Payasa (Carrot Pudding/Kheer/Payasam)

Before posting this recipe, I did like to wish all my readers a very happy and safe deepavali (a row of lights). True to the word, this festival is celebrated by lighting up homes with lots of diyas (oil lamps), flowers, rangoli, and crackers. And how can one forget sweets? This is the time to indulge in lots of caloric sweets and forget about the weighing machine for a while. After all diwali comes once in a year.

Talking about sweets, we still like to keep it traditional at home by making payasa along with other varieties of sweets.

Payasa (in Kannada), Payasam ( in Tamil), Kheer (in Hindi), Pudding (in English), Athough the names are different in different languages, the ingredients which go in to the making of this dish is the same. It has the combination of Rice, Milk, Sugar, flavoured with Cardamoms, Raisins, Cashews, Almonds and Saffron (kesari). Although rice is commonly used to make payasa, we also use vermicelli, sago, poppy seeds. This year for diwali, My mother-in-law prepared payasa with Carrot as the main ingredient. Its very different from the usual rice pudding and tastes delicious too!!!!

Ingredients: (Serves ~6)

Carrot - 4

Sugar - 1 cup

Milk - 1 and 1/2 cup (boiled)

Cardamom - (8-10)

Raisins and Cashews - (8-10 each)

Almonds - 5 (coarse powder)

Saffron - few

Preparation:

1. Pressure cook carrots. Grind them with 1/2 cup milk.

2. Take a deep bottomed vessel, and boil the ground mixture for 5 mins along with 1 cup milk, sugar, cardamoms, saffron and raisins.

3. Fry the cashews in 1 tsp ghee and add it to the above.

Serving tip: Best served when slightly chilled.

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