Doodh Peda

Aah the Peda!!.... It brings back such not-so-sweet memories.... 

I was not even into 6 months of my marriage. Those days my husband was more than willing to try my cooking experiments. It used to give me a good boost to try out new recipes. 

My cousin C who taught me most of my cooking(kinda my cooking Guru), gave me this recipe. Even though I am not so keen on eating milk based sweets and barfis, I still wanted to try this one out and enhance my culinary skills to be able to make at least few variety of dishes whenever we had guests over.

I made it...... the whole mixture overcooked and became dark brown! It got stuck to the glassware like a big piece of concrete. I had to take a wooden spoon and pound on it to break it into pieces. 

But still it came out super tasty and chewy. It tasted like the base of kadlekayi chikki. So it was not all bad:) 

To clean it, I had to soak-scrub, soak-scrub, soak-scrub for many days. Well, my husband did most of the scrubbing. 

This time, my daughter N’s school required parents to bring food for a potluck party for a school function. I had signed up for dessert. Generally I prefer store bought stuff, but this time I wanted to take something homemade. So I searched my bookmarked folder for some easy recipes. I found this peda recipe(the picture in it is very inviting) which was more or less same as the one I had tried many years ago. 

This time it was different. I was confident. This recipe looked like a piece of cake! I knew what to watch out for. To be frank, I was little smug all the while making it, thinking this is nothing for an experienced cook like me!

So here is the recipe - 

"Gowdru" Pulao

Calling a dish something shouldn't change the taste of it, right? WRONG!

Whenever I make pulao, the aroma is so fragrant that one cannot wait to take a bite. But when you actually take a bite, it falls flat of its expectations.. A big “tuss”! 

One would keep guessing what it is? a pulao? just another rice bath? a green rice bath? I’ve even had a guest ask me what it is. 

It would have some weird sweet taste to it, which came from god knows which ingredient! May be carrot, may be sweet corn, may be coconut, may be cinnamon.. I have no idea!

Every time I saw a pulao recipe online, I would bookmark it to try for the next time. The next time I tried, I would follow that recipe religiously. But the result would be that same weird sweet taste.. I tried increasing garlic, decreasing cinnamon, increasing onion, decreasing carrot, increasing green chili, adding pepper, adding garam masala, skipping coconut, adding tomato, made it in cooker, made it on the stove top directly(well, you get the gist); but that weird taste stayed. 

This time I opened my bookmarked folder again and decided to try this Gowdru Pulav recipe. My husband started to worry that I am making Pulao again :); but being the persistent fighter I am, I ignored him!  

The recipe was of a basic pulao with nothing much different actually, except for the fact that there was egg in it. I skipped the egg, but the remaining recipe was the same I’ve tried many many times before. But it came out differently! Good different! But how? That is still a mystery! The only thing I did was skip carrot altogether, may be that was it. The taste is 1 step closer to the taste I want to achieve - yay!

So here is “gowdru” pulav recipe for you -