Winter Desserts

লাচ্চা সেমাই
Laccha Shemai

Laccha shemai served with raisins. Well, a raisin - the rest sunk!

Despite being such a small country, Bangladesh seems to be home to a unending variety of food. Every time I've moved back home or just dropped by for a visit, I've discovered something new to take back with me and attempt to recreate. Laccha shemai is one such dish, which I first came across while at school in Dhaka during the early 2000s. I'd grown up on another form of the dessert - dudh (or milk) shemai - but I'd never been a big fan. For those of you unfamiliar with the dish, shemai is a form of dried or fried vermicelli, and may be tricky to get your hands on unless you live near an Asian supermarket.

Shemai or fried vermicelli, as seen pre-soaking

However, if you do manage to procure some cooking laccha shemai is the most simple thing. The recipe below essentially calls for boiling some milk, sugar and spices before soaking in the shemai and serving the dish warm. It's the perfect dessert for a cold winter, and its traditionally eaten during this season in my family. It's a casual dessert, served after dinner on a normal day. On the odd occasion its eaten separately as a snack or during tea, but that might just be me. I prefer laccha shemai to dudh shemai as it doesn't call for boiling the vermicelli along with the milk, leaving the strands with a chewy "al dente" quality. This in my opinion makes for a more interesting texture than the mush you're often left with for dudh shemai, but it does mean laccha shemai has to be consumed almost immediately after its prepared.  

Review: Yorokobi by CJ

My Local Takeaway

Beautiful, luscious bulgogi served with steamed rice

I lie. Yorkobi by Chef Jang is a proper restaurant, and I am just lucky they do a number of their dishes to take away. I've taken advantage of this fact a number of times, and dropped by for a sit down full dinner a few times as well. Located just two minutes from my front door and serving Japanese and Korean fare, Yorokobi is definitely my go-to local in Aberdeen. The town has an impressive number of restaurants, and although none of them so far have been amazing, a surprisingly large number of them have been very good. I'd even go as far as saying the local restaurant scene in Aberdeen is superior to Richmond, my last (chain-blighted) town. 

Heritage From Elsewhere

Apple & Blackberry Crumble

Apple and blackberry crumble served with frozen yoghurt

I first encountered crumble at a pub in Selly Oak during my university days in Birmingham. Served warm with a side of vanilla ice cream, it appealed to my fondness of hot-and-cold contrasting desserts. However, poor iterations over the years have made me wary - sometimes the apples have been a tasteless mush, or a side of custard has been bland and flavourless. I'm sure I've been sampling it in the wrong places (the work canteen is hardly the place to seek out good food), and so I'm glad to finally have a recipe of my own to use.

The instructions below come from my partner, who I called up one evening after having bought blackberries for the first time without knowing what to do with them. I am happy to report I have since found out that blackberries can be eaten raw as is, but more importantly the conversation precipitated a request for homemade crumble from me. Surprisingly my partner obliged - apparently crumble was one of the desserts he grew up on - and the results are what you see in the photo above. The actual recipe is adapted from an original by Merrilees Parker, and is available on the BBC website.

Eggs From Our Sundarbans Trip

ক্যাপসিকাম ও পাপরিকা দিয়ে ডিম ভুনা 

Eggs, Red Pepper & Smoked Paprika Bhuna

Egg bhuna, served with khichuri on the boat during our trip
through the Sundarbans. From my Instagram feed.

Curried eggs have a long history in my family. In Bangladesh, they represent a cheap, inexpensive way to incorporate protein into a family's diet. Growing up, I had a great dislike for eggs and currying them used to be one of my mom's tactics to get me to eat them. They're also easier (read: quicker) to cook than meat, and therefore often a common enough recourse when she was pressed for time in the kitchen. This recipe is my own, based on the basic chicken curry recipe I posted long ago here. The addition of smoked paprika is the result of a slight personal obsession, and the red pepper gives the dish sweet-sour notes without resorting to sugar or yoghurt. I have been cooking this dish for a while, and have served it to guests when a vegetarian main has been called for.

On the left, the banks of the forest as we sailed past.

On the right, the beach our walk eventually took us to.

Our trip to the Sundarbans for New Year's Eve served as a reminder to post this, as the chef on board our ship served a very lightly spiced version of this with khichuri for breakfast. It made for a heavy breakfast, which was reasonable in light of the walking we were going to be doing throughout the day. Unless you're preparing for a similar excursion, I would recommend serving this as a main or side dish for dinner or lunch. 

Adding Ingredients

Jaggery-Laced Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cheesecake

Jaggery-laced chocolate & peanut butter cheesecake.
And yes, I did have this for breakfast today.

I'm not a baker, and this is undoubtedly a good thing. I have a sweet tooth and a great love for cake, and if I were a baker I'd have to accept becoming a balloon as well. That being said, baking is a skill that adds a degree of versatility to my abilities in the kitchen, so there are a few things I want to make sure I know how to bake. My first ever attempt at baking involved a sponge cake - a dense mass of flour, sugar, butter and eggs that refused to rise. My baby brother was the only one willing to try it, probably because he didn't know any better at that age. Over the years, things have gotten a little better. I can make a decent pumpkin pie, and am occasionally successful with my brownies and lemon tarts. 

I've always had a thing for baked cheesecake, a dessert I was introduced to in Hong Kong. Last week I decided it was time to add a version of it to my limited repertoire. My childhood memories are of a rich, solid salty-sweet cheesecake, but the recipe below produces something more delicate and definitely sweeter. It is adapted from a BBC Food recipe by Nigella Lawson, and the original can be found here. I am changing the instructions for hand-mixing, modifying amounts and substituting a few ingredients, notably jaggery for brown sugar in the topping as I wanted to use something Bangladeshi. Note that if you do have access to a food processor, use it - it makes life a lot easier!