Houston, We Have Carrot Halwa

Describing my weekend as is an understatement. I'm honestly amazed how much you can cram into a Saturday afternoon and then still have the desire to cram in even more craziness the next afternoon. But I did it. And I dragged my husband, son and mom along with me, screaming and whining and crying and pouting all the way.

Indiana Jones and the Pressure Cooker of Death
During the previous two weekends, I viewed the new Indiana Jones movie after a delicious meal at Madras Pavilion. (I still contend that idlis and medhu vada are great movie snacks and should be available in the lobby.) This weekend had me and the crew back at Madras Pavilion but followed that with several hours of shopping, starting first at Tuesday Morning.

Can I say enough gushing things about Tuesday Morning? Probably, but I won't attempt it. This place is almost as much fun as Half-Price Books: You never know what might be new. After scoring my faboo Cuisinart cookware here before I was unemployed and just starting to build my arsenal of culinary weapons, I came to the store on Saturday with modest hopes of at least finding more of said cookware so Mum could acquire a new saute pan or skillet for the little sister (whose own favorite saute pan was destroyed by a bumbling boyfriend and a strange encounter with mushrooms some months back).

Ha! Oh, why should I have only entertained modest hopes?

Low and behold there upon the shelves near the Cuisinart pieces sat several boxes of the Fagor 10-quart pressure cooker and 11-piece canning set I'd been gawking at on Amazon.com and other places. Granted, it wasn't the Duo 8-quart model I'd also been considering (i.e., entertaining as a potential purchase once I'm employed again) and it has a nonstick coating (oh the evil!). But dammit, the thing looked perfectly fine to me and Mum, and it was affordable (or at least had a price point I could rationalize as affordable for us at our present fiscal condition) and...well, I just wanted to own it! Yes, I'm a weak consumer, I admit it. I have several recipes and ingredients for which a pressure cooker would be ideal, and I'm reluctant to try them because I lack a pressure cooker.

Plus I just wanted to determine for myself if pressure cookers really are the time- and energy-saving devices their makers claim them to be or if they're kitchen WMDs disguised as harmless cookware that are just waiting to detonate beans, pot roast, potatoes or what have ya and take out whatever hapless object might be nearby at the time of detonation. I mean, who wasn't told the tale of the exploding pressure cooker by some mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, home ec teacher, FHA member, fellow fry cook, dorm roomie, dude at the dog park or Joe Schmoe on the street? Even though sites galore assured readers the new models didn't have the capacity to explode, I'm skeptical by nature. And I wanted to get over my own childhood fears of Mum's old Presto chicka-chicka-chicka-chuffer.

So, yeah, I bought it. What the hell I'm going to do with the canning stuff I haven't a clue. (It's currently taking up space in various cabinets that I've recently cleaned out. Give me 10 years to get around to donating it to Goodwill.) But as soon as we got home that evening, I was plotting and planning my first experiment with my new Fagor: carrot halwa.

Carroty Bliss
Many folks eschew the notion that veggies can make for wonderful desserts. My husband, I seem to recall, scoffs at the notion of zucchini cake yet heartily embraces carrot cake and, since he's had it, carrot halwa. He has forgiven me, I think, for stinking up the microwave with my first disastrous attempt at making carrot halwa, and he heartily endorsed attempting the recipe again Sunday morning whilst we were doing laundry, preparing for yoga (well, I was) and all the other travails of a typical Sunday morning at Chez Boeckman-Walker.

Mum agreed to help out since (1) she was there and (2) wanted to see a weight-less (a chicka-chicka-chicka-chuff-less) pressure cooker and my new food processor in action. Thank the FSM that she was there because otherwise carrot halwa take two would have been as big a disaster as the first take.

Carrot Halwa After-Action Review
1. It's not surprising we wound up putting in damn near a cup of cornstarch and a full can of fat-free sweetened condensed milk in an attempt to thicken the concoction simply because we were unsure exactly when to start the pressure cooking countdown because even though the instructions informed us to start the cooking clock when a steady stream of steam escapes from the valve, we didn't realize until more than half-way through the countdown where the steam was supposed to escape from, so the carrots were really only pressure-cooked for maybe a minute, not the six minutes (the rough equivalent of two whistles on an Indian pressure cooker) called for in the recipe. Since they were under pressure-cooked, the carrots weren't able to absorb the milk as they should, thus we had to employ other means of thickening the concoction.
Lesson learned: Pay closer attention to the product schematics before operating the first time.
2. It's not surprising we wound up put more sweetener in the concoction because the recipe was a "dieter friendly" formulation. Madras Pavillion goes for the real deal.
Lesson learned: Stop expecting "dieter friendly" formulations of restaurant favorites to taste exactly like said restaurant favorites.
3. Checking that we had all the ingredients in the right quantity before doubling the recipe is really, really smart.
Lesson learned: Check that I have all the ingredients in the right quantity before deciding to double the recipe.

I have about 32 ounces of carrot halwa in the freezer about about a cup or so left in the fridge after having a large serving post-experiment and sending some home with Mum. That I got Mum wanting to make it is a nice, unexpected benefit.

Hmm. Edible food. Midwestern mother interested in trying "exotic" Indian dish on her own. Hey, I'd call this experiment a success!