Stonethrower's Rants: Tarting it up

Monday, January 12, 2015

Tarting it up

My cast of characters is every expanding.

A few days ago, HRH the Queen of Kutch’s mother i.e. the Queens Mother, proclaimed that she was having an intimate lunch party for 30 of her closest friends and relations.

The menu was predominantly Gujarati food. Nothing wrong with that. On offer was the delicious Rajwadi Daal or the classic Gujarati Daal which is sweet sour and spicy with Peanuts, Sambhariya which is a dry vegetable dish with a coconut based masala and Telia a fresh pickle once again with vegetables. Of course there were several other dishes too. It was a lavish meal.

Queens Mother requested us to make an appropriate dessert for this feast. This got us thinking. Knowing the target audience, dessert would ideally be an Indian one, but then again, Indian desserts are simply just boring, without texture, one dimensional and horribly sweet. More often than not desserts are bought out. But that was not an option. So we set about thinking.

Ultimately what we came up with was pretty cool, even if I say so myself. The brief was met and I believe the desserts were hugely appreciated. I must confess that though we did not taste the complete dessert, it would have been terribly sweet.

What we made were two tarts. We made the tart bases and lined them with Crème Patisserie or Pastry Cream. This is a sort of custard made with milk, egg and flour and is used as a base in several patisserie items. The Cream can be flavored as you want. So, in keeping with the theme we flavored the Crème Patisserie with Cardamom powder. In the first tart we used Gajar Ka Halwa. This was blended to make a smooth paste. The paste was piped into the tart base and topped with Gold Vark or Gold Leaf and garnished with flaked almonds. Job done.

The second tart had the base of Cardamom Crème Patisserie. On this base we placed mini Gulab Jamuns. To finally garnish the Tart we sprinkled sweet Boondi. Job done.

So there you have two beautiful tarts.