Since yesterday was Diwali, here’s a sweet recipe to sweeten your lives. Happy Diwali folks!
As the name suggests, it is a milk kheer or milk sweet. In its very basic form, this is the simplest of the south Indian sweets and hardly needs 3-4 ingredients to make. It’s fairly easy to make with the only effort being in reducing the milk.
Pal Payasam
Ingredients:
- 1-litre milk
- 1 tbsp basmati rice (or any long grained rice)
- 4-6 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp ghee
- A pinch of cardamom powder (optional)
Method:
- In a large pan, boil the milk and when the milk starts to boil over and bubble, reduce the heat and continue to boil the milk.
- In a smaller pan, heat the ghee and fry the rice for around 30 seconds.
- Pour the rice into the boiling milk and keep stirring till it reduces to half the original quantity.
- When the rice has completely cooked, add the sugar and the cardamom powder (if you are using it).
- At this point, you can also use a few strands of saffron as well as some fried cashew nuts and raisins.
- Continue boiling until the sugar gets absorbed into the milk.
- Switch off the flame and serve hot or cold.
Singapore in the 1860s is exotic and yet terrifying for a penniless Englishwoman, alone and vulnerable after her mother’s death. Too pretty to obtain a governess’s job, Isabella Saunders accepts an offer from a Singapore merchant to teach him English and live with his family.
Laura Grey, a veteran governess, joins the Selwick Spy School expecting to find elaborate disguises and thrilling exploits in service to the spy known as the Pink Carnation. She hardly expects her first assignment to be serving as governess for the children of Andre Jaouen, right-hand man to Bonaparte’s minister of police. Jaouen and his arch rival, Gaston Delaroche, are investigating a suspected Royalist plot to unseat Bonaparte, and Laura’s mission is to report any suspicious findings.
