Laapsi

Broken wheat rather than flour, cooked in milk with dried fruit in it.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (ghee), dairy (milk).

Ingredients

• 250 g broken wheat, dalia
• 150 g ghee
• 200 g jaggery, grated
• 700 ml milk
• 300 ml water
• 4 cardamom pods, seeds ground
• 50 g almonds, slivered
• 40 g raisins
• 30 g dried dates, chopped

Method

1. BROKEN WHEAT RATHER THAN FLOUR, COOKED IN MILK WITH DRIED FRUIT IN IT. Its article's ingredient list is where this dish lives: grain flour OR BROKEN WHEAT and ghee, ALONG WITH MILK, NUTS, RAISIN AND OTHER DRIED FRUITS. Broken wheat is a grain you can see and chew, quite different from the flours in the rest of this group, and the milk and dried fruit are named as part of the dish rather than as a garnish. That matters because another sweet here, Kansar, opens its own article by calling itself "also known as Lapsi" -- and its ingredient list is coarse wheat flour, ghee and tepid water, with no milk and no fruit at all. Same grain, two dishes.
2. THE BROKEN WHEAT IS ROASTED IN GHEE UNTIL IT SMELLS NUTTY. Twelve minutes, stirred. It takes longer than semolina because the grains are bigger.
3. IT IS DONE WHEN A GRAIN CRUSHES EASILY AND NOT BEFORE. Broken wheat is genuinely hard; thirty minutes of simmering is the minimum and it is the commonest thing to undercook.
4. THE MILK IS THE MAIN LIQUID AND IT GOES IN HOT. Seven hundred millilitres against three hundred of water. This is a wetter cooking than a flour halwa and the grain needs it.
5. THE JAGGERY GOES IN WHEN THE GRAIN IS ALREADY SOFT. In early it toughens the wheat and the dish never comes right.
6. THE DRIED FRUIT GOES IN TO SOFTEN, NOT TO DECORATE. Dates and raisins for the last ten minutes, in the pan, so they swell and give up some sweetness.
7. IT IS LOOSE AND SPOONABLE, NOT SET. Nothing in this one is cut or rolled.
8. ITS ARTICLE RECORDS AN OLDER RECIPE USING REFINED FLOUR INSTEAD. It cites the Bhojanakutuhala, where the main ingredient is samita, refined wheat flour -- which is a smoother, paler dish.
9. IT IS MADE FOR CEREMONIES AND OFFERED, WHICH ITS ARTICLE SAYS. Prepared during Hindu ceremonies and served as a religious offering.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under India · All recipes