Semolina Halva (Sooji Haluwa)

My best intentions for posting this month have been made insignificant by what is happening in my area of the world at the moment - which is why you haven't heard much from me lately! In the area I live there are currently 4 serious bush fires, a couple of which are burning out of control. Although we live in an area prone to fires, this year the fire season has begun badly - and it's only spring! The hot, dry, windy weather we are having now coupled with the fact that we had an unseasonably warm winter leading up to this has lead to terrifying bushfire conditions. Thousands of hectares of bushland has been burnt and many, many people have lost their homes, their cars, their possessions and, in some cases, their beloved pets. Fortunately there has been no known deaths in my area, which seems miraculous.

Today it has been predicted that the weather will be "as bad as it gets" for bush fires. Hot, dry weather with winds of up to 100km. This could potentially be disastrous for the spread of the fires that are already burning. All the schools and childcare centres have been closed for the next few days, hospitals and nursing homes have been evacuated or relocated and people are being urged to leave their homes if they are not prepared. It's a daunting situation!

We have been spending our days preparing our house and getting our plans in order. I feel that we are *pretty well* prepared now, so I've managed to find time to sit down and share a post with you. Today I will be hovering around with my sprinklers at the ready and hoping for the best. My thoughts and best wishes to all the thousands of other people across Australia that are facing similar situations (there are currently more than 60 fires currently burning in NSW alone, although a lot of these fires are being controlled and contained by our wonderful fire fighters).

So what delicious treats can we wheel out to distract us from natural disasters? How about some delicious Nepalese Sooji Haluwa? This is a really easy halva recipe, made with semolina and crammed full of tasty nuts and plump golden raisins.

Nepalese Sooji Haluwa (Semolina Halva)

Ingredients
1/3 cup vegan margarine
1 cup semolina
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups of almond, oat or rice milk
1/3 cup golden raisins
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
2 tbsp dessicated coconut
2 tbsp chopped cashews (about 10 or so)
2 tbsp chopped pistachios (plus more to garnish)
1/3 cup almonds, chopped roughly
Agave nectar, to garnish (or, if you are not a vegan, you can use honey which would be traditionally used)

To Make
1. Heat the margarine in a medium saucepan until melted. Add the semolina and cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until the semolina starts to turn brown.
2. Add the sugar and stir it through, followed by the milk, raisins, cardamom and coconut.
3. Bring to a simmer and then add the cashews, pistachios and almonds. Turn the heat right down and cook over a low heat until all the milk is absorbed into the semolina.
4. Transfer to a serving bowl. You can eat it hot or cold. Before serving sprinkle with fresh chopped pistachios and drizzle with agave nectar (or honey).

Serves 6.

This month I'm featuring lots of recipes from Nepal!

Check out my other Nepali/Nepalese recipe posts:

Tomato Achar

Aloo Roti (Potato Roti)

Vegetable Momo with Chilli Sesame Dipping Sauce

Chilli Grapefruit & Orange Salad

Saag Tarkari

Sesame Chilli Fried Potatoes

Afghan Brides Fingers with Orange Blossom Syrup (Asabia el Aroos)

This month the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop is having a 'Sauces' themed hop. An interesting theme, as I never do many sweet sauces, so I was a bit stumped. I will be very keen to see what everybody else posts, as it is an area which I'm sure could encourage much creativity! In the end I managed to combine this blog hop with my other theme for September. September is Afghan Food Month, which has been delicious thus far! I also have to say that I have been receiving a very enthusiastic response from readers about featuring Afghan food, it seems to be a very popular choice! If you'd like to request a country to be featured then head on here and do so!

I very almost made a baklava, because I absolutely love baklava and I've actually never made a pistachio one. But instead I opted for the Afghan option which I've never made before - after all, these feature countries are meant to be all about learning and trying new things right? These light and tasty Brides Fingers are actually much easier than making baklava. They are also comparatively healthier, as they use less margarine and the end results are dipped in the syrup rather than completely soaked in it. I'm still a sucker for baklava (check out my Walnut Baklava here), but I think I will probably make the Brides Fingers more often!

Thanks to the super Kitchen Crusader for hosting this finger licking hop! Check out my entries into the other sweet adventures hops:

August's Berry Hop - Sugar Free and Vegan Raspberry Fudge

July's Nut Hop -  Best Ever Vegan Carrot Cake  (I got this one in just in time, but it never appeared on the link list so you may have missed it!)
June's Pie Hop - Easy, Sticky, Messy Banana Rum Pie

May's Tea Hop - Thai Red Tea Vegan Jelly with Poached Apples
April's Lemon Hop - Lemon Curd 'Cake Sandwiches'

March's Layers Hop - Rhubarb and Apple Sago Parfait

February's 'Love' Hop - African Almond, Pistachio and Orange Blossom Bites

January's Chocolate Hop - Black Forest Shots and Truffles in 3 Flavours: Smoky Paprika, Tahini & Strawberry Gum
December's Festive Hop - Chocolate Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

The Bride's Fingers
80g pistachios
1/3 cup raw sugar
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
7 sheets thawed filo pastry
1/2 cup melted Nuttelex
Extra chopped pistachio, to garnish (optional)

Orange Blossom Syrup
1 1/2 cups raw sugar
3/4 cup water
1 tbsp orange blossom water
Juice of 1 lemon

To Make
1.To make the syrup, combine the sugar and water in a small pan and place over a medium heat. Boil until the sugar is dissolved and the syrup becomes slightly thicker, abotu 15-20 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the orange blossom water and lemon juice. Set aside to cool.
2. Combine the pistachios, sugar and cardamom in a food processor. Process until the nuts are well chopped. This is your filling.
3. Cut your filo pastry sheets once longitudinally and once horizontally, to make 4 long thin strips out of each sheet.
4. Lay 2 sheets of filo with the short end facing you on your work space. Grab a pastry brush and melted nuttelex and have them on hand. I like to brush just one line of nuttelex between the two sheets to hold them together, but it's not entirely necessary.
5. Place a tablespoon of the filling across the short side of pastry facing you.

6. Fold the edges of the pastry inward. I always let the edges touch in the middle, this allows for consistency of size and easy, neat rolling.

7. Brush the pastry with melted nuttelex and roll it up into a neat little log. You can use a little bit of extra melted nuttelex to help seal the edge. 

8. Place the logs with the edge facing downwards on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Continue until all the filling and pastry is use up. Should make 14 'fingers'.

9. Bake in an oven heated to 150 degrees C for about 15 minutes, or until the pastry is just golden brown. Keep an eye on them, as oven temperatures vary.

10. When you remove them from the oven, grab a pair of tongs and immediately dip the hot fingers into the cold syrup. Arrange on a plate. Drizzle 1-2 more tbsp of syrup over the top and sprinkle with chopped pistachios (optional). Serve at room temperature.

Makes 14. 

This month I'm featuring lots of amazing recipes from Afghanistan!

Check out my other Afghan recipe posts:

Mashawa (Afghan Spicy Beans)

Halwa e Zardak (Rose, Cardamom and Carrot Pudding)

Awb e Dundawn (Incredible Pistachio Biscuits)

Sweet Potato and Coriander Bolani 

Spiced Tofu Palau (Afghanistan's National Dish)

Awb e Dundawn (Heavenly Afghan Pistachio Biscuits!)

I don't make a lot of biscuits, not really sure why. But making these amazing biscuits makes me want to make them all the time! They are Afghan Pistachio Biscuits, their texture is soft and crumby like shortbread and they're flavoured with the traditional Afghan holy trinity - rosewater, cardamom and pistachios (the basis for all Afghan desserts as far as I can tell!).

Every month I take a country recommended by a reader and feature as many good recipes inspired by that country that I can in a month. Want to see some of the other ones I've had?

January 2012 - Croatia Month

February 2012 - Chad Month

March 2012 - Bosnia Month

April 2012 - Iran Month

May 2012 - Scotland Month

June 2012 - Cambodia Month

August 2012 - Sweden Month

September 2012 - Afghanistan Month

This recipe is also part of the Eating the Alphabet Blog Hop, which this month is using the letters P, Q & R. Lots and lots of choices from those letters. My contribution is Pistachio based, one of my absolute favourite nuts to make sweets out of. This recipe, like a few others featured this month, was adapted from Afghancooking.net. It's a great resource for ideas, however some of the recipes haven't turned out like the photo and description would indicate. This one wasn't an exception. It said to cook the biscuits at 200 degrees C for 10-12 minutes! I gave them the benefit of the doubt and tried it. At 200 they overcooked in about 6 minutes. So I changed the temperature and the time and they turned out much better.

Awb e Dundawn
Adapted from Afghancooking

Ingredients
3 cups wholemeal flour
1 cup soft icing mixture
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 cup Nuttelex (or other non dairy butter or margarine)
3/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
3 tbsp rosewater, plus 1 tsp
2 tbsp pistachios
Whole pistachios, to garnish

To Make
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Mix the flour, icing mixture, baking powder and cardamom together in a bowl.
3. Add the Nuttelex and rub into the dry ingredients with your hands until the mixture is the consistency of coarse bread crumbs.
4. Add the oil and rosewater and knead into a ball.
5. Knead with your hands for a few minutes. The mixture will be slightly crumbly, but should stick together into a ball when pressed.
6. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Roll out pieces of the dough about the size and shape of a ping pong ball or a whole walnut. Place them on the baking tray a few centimetres apart.
7. Use your index finger to gently make an imprint on each biscuit, the edges will crack a bit as you do this, but that's ok.
8. Bake for about 8 minutes. The bottoms will be slightly browned but the tops should be still pale. They'll be slightly soft as you take them out of the oven, but will firm up as they cool.
9. While they cool make the pistachio filling. Place the pistachios and the extra 1 tsp rosewater in a food processor. Process until a coarse paste is formed.
10. Place about 1/2 tsp of pistachio paste in the imprint of each biscuit. Decorate with a whole pistachio if you wish.

Makes about 20 biscuits.

This month I'm featuring lots of amazing recipes from Afghanistan!

Check out my other Afghan recipe posts:

Mashawa (Afghan Spicy Beans)

Halwa e Zardak (Rose, Cardamom and Carrot Pudding)

Brides Fingers with Orange Blossom Syrup

Sweet Potato and Coriander Bolani 

Spiced Tofu Palau (Afghanistan's National Dish)

Vegan Halwa e Zardak (Carrot, Cardamom and Rosewater Pudding)

This September is Afghanistan Food Month, so here is my first Afghan sweet for the month! This is a veganised version of a recipe which I found here. As soon as I read it I knew that I had to make it. I love making sweets out of carrots! Carrot cake has always been a favourite of mine; I also made a delicious carrot and rosewater jam when I featured Iranian food - which was unexpectedly delicious! So I was fairly sure that it would be a big success, and it really was! It even exceeded my expectations.

The recipe that I got from this website wasn't the best recipe. The first step is to cook the carrots in butter (i.e. nuttlex) and then add all the liquids and then to "cook until all the liquid is absorbed". This didn't make sense to me at all, as carrots are already filled with liquid and don't generally absorb much by nature. So, unsurprisingly, they didn't. Perhaps they meant that it should be cooked without a lid so that the liquid would evaporate away? It didn't bother me though, as it made a lovely pudding even without having all the liquid 'absorbed'.

I recommend this dessert any day. It's a bit different any anyone you serve it too will be pleasantly surprised! The guests at my dinner party loved it and were really pleasantly surprised that it was made of carrots. 

Vegan Halwa e Zardak

Adapted from Afghancooking.com

Ingredients

1kg carrots, grated

1/2 cup Nuttelex (or any other non dairy butter or margarine)

1 1/2 cup almond milk (or sub soy milk)

1 1/2 cups coconut cream (1 tin)

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp ground cardamom

2 tbsp rosewater

1/2 cup almonds, chopped

1/2 cup pistachios, chopped

To Make

1. Grate the carrots. Yep, a bit of a slog. If you have a food processor that has a grating attachment then you can do it in there, as long as it grates fine enough. Otherwise I recommend enlisting a helping hand to help you get through it all.

2. Melt the Nuttelex in a large pot. Add the grated carrot and cook over a medium heat and cook for about 10 minutes. The carrots should have started to soften and smell cooked.

3. Add the almond milk, coconut cream and sugar. Turn the heat to low and simmer, covered, for about an hour. It should thicken as it cooks, stir occasionally. 

4. Add the cardamom and rosewater and stir through. 

5. Heat a small (preferably non stick) frypan and add the chopped almonds and pistachios. Toast over a medium heat, stirring often, for 2-3 minutes. Keep your eye on them so that they don't burn!

6. Transfer the warm pudding to a serving bowl and top with the toasted chopped nuts. Alternately, serve in individual glass bowls or parfait glasses.

Serve warm or room temperature.

Serves 6.

This month I'm featuring lots of amazing recipes from Afghanistan!

Check out my other Afghan recipe posts:

Mashawa (Afghan Spicy Beans)

Awb e Dundawn (Incredible Pistachio Biscuits)

Brides Fingers with Orange Blossom Syrup

Sweet Potato and Coriander Bolani 

Spiced Tofu Palau (Afghanistan's National Dish)

Vegan Yakh Dar Behesht (Ice in Heaven)

This Iranian sweet is quite unusual but also quite absurdly simple really. I'm not entirely sure why it's called Ice in Heaven - when I first read the name I thought it must be a milky frozen sweet, but then when I went to make it I find that it isn't frozen at all - it's just set with cornstarch just like Turkish Delight. It was delightfully simple to make and had a milky sweet taste with a lovely creamy consistency and colourful crunchy pistachios all over the top - what more could you ask for in a dessert?

The only thing you really need to know about it is that you have to stir it constantly to stop it going lumpy. I have to confess that I dropped the ball for a moment and ended up with some big sticky bits in mine but I managed to save it by putting the electric beaters through it on the highest setting and it whisked out the lumps. But learn from my mistake and just stir it continuously while you have it on the stove!

Yakh Dar Behesht
Adapted from the Iran Chamber Society website

Ingredients
1 litre almond milk
1 litre cold water
150g cornstarch
80g rice flour
500g raw sugar
1/2 cup rosewater
1 cup pistachios, very finely chopped

To Make
1. Place cold water in a large bowl and add the cornstarch. Stir well until the cornstarch is completely dissolved (there should be no lumps as long as you do this in cold water).
2. Place the almond milk and rice flour in a saucepan and stir well to dissolve. Add the cornstarch and place the saucepan over a low heat.
3. Stir continuously while the liquid heats up and bring it to a simmer. Stir continuously!!
4. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until it becomes the consistency of thick custard (stirring continuously!).
5. Pour into a large wide rectangular dish (like a big lasagne dish) and smooth the surface out level. Allow to cool.
6. Refrigerate for a couple of hours and then cut into diamond shaped slices in the pan.
7. Spread the crushed pistachios over the top and serve.

Serves 10-12.

This month I'm featuring lots of amazing Iranian recipes!

Check out my other Iranian recipe posts:

Persian Carrot and Rose Jam

Artichoke and Pine Nut Dolma

Iranian Sugar-pickled Garlic

Sholeh Zard (Rice & Rosewater Pudding)

Salad-e Shirazi

Naaz Khatoon (Eggplant with Pomegranate Molasses)

Torshi-havij (Pickled Baby Carrots)

Mokhalafat (Traditional Accompaniments) 

African Loz (Almond and Pistachio Bites of Amazingness)

I've been reading a lot of blog entires lately and have noticed a lot of Valentine's Day bashing going on. It's mostly along the lines of "why do we need a special day to be shown love when somebody who loves you should show you every day". My answer to this question is: we don't - but what's wrong with taking a moment out to appreciate how lucky you are to have love in your life and celebrate it a little?

I'd like to put forward two points on this matter (before I get to the delicious point of this post): Firstly, if you are in a relationship in which your partner (he or she) ONLY shows you love on Valentines Day then you shouldn't be in that relationship full stop - so that shouldn't even be an issue! Secondly, although there is no need to get commercial or expensive on Valentine's Day, there is nothing wrong with taking a moment out to appreciate the people in your life that you love and who love you. I'm not just talking about partners/spouses, but about the friends and family who love you and want to spend time with you - having people in your life who love you makes you the luckiest person in the world - so celebrate it!

I have to admit, I'm not the kind of person who does Valentine's Day. I don't buy into all the commercial stuff they push at you to try and make you believe that "she" (notice how all the push is on giving gifts to women on Valentine's Day? Highly sexist - why not give flowers and jewellery to the men??) won't love you unless you  buy her a really ugly diamond bracelet costing $1999. However, I think that people immediately jump in to hate Valentine's Day because of the commercial side - but Christmas is very commercial too and do you hate Christmas??? (I hope not because Xmas is awesome).

As a final note in this opinion article, I'd like to point out that you could apply the logic of "why do we need a special day to be shown love when somebody who loves you should show you every day" could be equally applied to any other 'special' day of the year. Do you expect people to only be nice to you and be happy that you are alive on your birthday? No, you expect that all year round but you still celebrate your birthday! Do you only appreciate living in a great country with amazing first world problems on Australia Day? No, if you have any sense you realise how lucky you are all year round but you can still appreciate the public holiday and have a celebration with friends and family if that is your tradition. Do you only eat chocolate on Easter? No, chocolate is for all year round but that doesn't mean you can't indulge on Easter! (As you can see from that I am not religious and the only think Easter means to me is chocolate). In SUM! Of course Valentine's Day shouldn't be the only day that your lover/friends/spouse show you that they love you - but what's wrong with it if they want to show you they love you on Valentine's Day as well?

After that very long intro - let's get to the recipe. When the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop girls announced that this month's theme was to be Love At First Bite, I thought that it was a pretty easy topic because it's so broad you can really post whatever you want, so I though this month I would combine it with the theme for this month on our blog: Chadian Food. Here on Gormandize with A-dizzle and K-bobo we like to take a different  country each month to explore their foods and learn as much as we can about recipes and ingredients from that country (if you'd like to check out our past months posts or to suggest a country for us to feature then hit up this post here!). This month we are featuring food inspired by Chad (to learn more about Chad and Chadian food check out this post here!) and we are continuing that this month with these incredible little African/Middle Eastern sweetmeats called Loz.

This is the second 'Valentines' themed blog hop I've participated in this month - check out the other hop too by checking out my entry - Vegan Strawberry Cherry Sago Trifle!

In my opinion there are 3 flavours which just ooze the idea of love: rosewater, orange blossom water and raspberries. These three ingredients always make your food so sensual! In this case these little babies are laced with orange blossom water and their aroma will make you fall in love at first smell whilst their incredible taste will be love at first bite!

I mean, look at it! What's not to love??

Ingredients:

230gm almond meal

120gm icing sugar

7 tablespoons orange blossom water

30gm shelled pistachio nuts finely chopped

30gm caster sugar

Icing sugar for dusting

Extra pistachio nuts for garnishing

How to make:

1.Combine the ground almonds and icing sugar with enough orange-blossom water to

form a stiff paste.

2.Knead until smooth and allow to rest for about 10 minutes.

3.Combine the finely chopped pistachio nuts and caster sugar, grind in a mortar and  

pestle until fine, and set aside.

4.Roll the paste into balls the size of a walnut, and using a teaspoon handle, make a small hole in each ball and and fill it with the combined pistachio mixture, then close the hole over the filling so it is once again a ball. This takes a bit of technique, as the powdery sugar filling makes it difficult to close over the hole - after a few tries I perfected a method of sort of pinching the seam together and smoothing in over by tapping it repeatedly with my index finger. It worked really well, but sadly I don't have a YouTube channel so I can't really show you how I did it!

5.Roll the balls in icing sugar and place in small paper cups or on a serving plate.

6.Decorate the top of each ball with a pistachio nut and serve.

Makes approx 13.

Check out our other Chadian recipes as well: 

Chadian Breakfast Bouille

Millet Balls with 3 dipping sauces

Chadian Sweet Potato Fritters

Chadian Irio (Mashed beans, potatoes and vegetables)
Kachumbari 

Maharagwe 

Edible Christmas Gifts Part 4: Orange & Pistachio Shortbread

Christmas? No Problem, Man. I've just finished making all my Xmas presents today - and man it feels good to have it all done. Above we have (L-R): Cranberry and Almond Biscuits, Orange and Pistachio Shortbread and Tahini and Lime Biscuits - all vegan of course because that is what we do here at G w/ A & K. My family and friends will also be getting a lovely array of home made jams, for details and recipes see Edible Christmas Gifts Part 1.... and apologies to any family who are reading this and just got their Xmas gift surprise ruined....

So when I sat down to plan my Xmas biscuit jars I immediately remembered A-dizzle's delicious Spiced Vegan Shortbread recipe posted up recently. So I decided to use that and to make a variation on this great shortbread, so that I could offer up another Xmas gift idea: Orange and Pistacho Shortbread. 

Ingredients:

1 cup of nuttelex or other non-dairy butter/margarine
½ cup of brown sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract

1 tsp orange essence
2 1/4 cups of plain flour 

1 tbsp orange zest

1/3 cup shelled pistachios (measure first, then chop finely)

To Make:

1. Preheat your oven to 180° (conventional) or 160° (fan forced).
2. In a large bowl, cream the nuttelex, sugar, orange extract and vanilla extract together with an electric mixer. Add the orange zest and mix again.
3. Add the flour and spice mix (1/2 cup at a time) to the nuttelex and mix well with a spoon or your fingers until a smooth, even and firm dough has been formed. This should only take a couple of minutes.
4. After lining a tray with baking paper, roll small balls out of the dough and press each down gently with two fingers. After pressing down each ball, you can press down on each side of the biscuits with a fork to create a design.
5. Place your shortbread in the oven for 20-25 minutes. They should still look nice and pale and feel a bit too soft to touch (don't worry they will firm up as they cool), if they feel hard and biscuity straight out of the oven they are over cooked.
6. You can now remove your shortbread biscuits from the oven, cool them for 10 minutes and enjoy!

Makes about 26 biscuits.

Want more Special Edible Gift Ideas? Check out the rest in this series of posts:
Edible Gift Ideas 1: Jams!! (several of them!)
Edible Gift Ideas 2: Super Gingery Gingerbread People
Edible Gift Ideas 3: Spiced Shortbread

And if you are in the Xmas spirit:
Chocolate Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding
Mulled Spiced Cider

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