Rawa Ladoos...

Some recipes in the Indian kitchen amaze me. These recipes are handed over from the older generation to the newer generation and are seemingly imprecise but at times still yield perfect results. These recipes never have standard measurements or oven temperatures to rely upon. Instead they give the vaguest of clues to judge the "done"ness of the raw material.

Take for instance the humble rawa or sooji—coarsely ground wheat, which is used to make sweet and savoury items all across India. Most recipes start with roasting the sooji in some fat; either oil or ghee. “How much” do you roast the sooji? "For how long" is an irrelevant question where measurements, if any at all, are in katoris (cups) and the katori size is as diverse as the people in India are. Secondly the sooji is not roasted in an oven with a fixed temperature or neither does it get any uniform heating, and the size of flame is a very subjective matter. So "how much" do you roast? The traditional answer is, "till one can smell the aroma in the adjoining room". Now the the aroma of roasted sooji has a mind of its own. It doesn't make itself sniffable in the kitchen but makes its presence known only in the adjoining room. So you either run from room to room sniffing and coming back to continue roasting, hoping the sooji to not turn to carbon while you are away, or you position a trusted sniffer, usually the husband or a 10-12 year old, who invariably doesn't sniff right, or forgets to sniff and only yells when the sooji is half burnt.

So then after multiple attempts at getting the sniffing scale right the lady of the house decides it is time to discover other ways to decide the "how much" for the sooji. She does succeed one day by deciding for herself what colour is right or what texture is correct but keeps that knowledge to herself like a sacred secret.

The other perfect example is of the sugar syrup—the paak in Marathi or the chashni in Hindi. Now for many in India how good a cook is, may well be judged by his or her expertise in making a perfect chashni with one string or two string consistency and making a sweet out of it. Candy thermometers are non-existent on the domestic scene and why would you need one when you have such perfectly imperfect guidelines to have the perfect sugar syrup? "Just take a drop of the (boiling hot) sugar syrup on your index finger and stretch it using your thumb. When you see one string it is one string consistency, when you see two, it is two string consistency. Kindergarten stuff, yeah! Well, not really. Firstly, if there's anyone naive enough to believe otherwise, let me tell you, it hurts to have boiling sugar on your fingers. Secondly, there's a "how much" here too. How much should the string stretch before it breaks? The answer is usually shown by using the thumb and index finger to show an imaginary stretch. And yeah, that's it. A perfectly vague way to pass on a recipe! And the success of some Indian sweet recipes completely depends on how perfect this sugar syrup is. And anything less than perfect can yield the most disastrous results.

Indians love a delicious sweet called the “rawyacha ladoo” or the “sooji ka laddu”. The recipe involves mixing "perfectly" roasted sooji and "perfectly" made sugar syrup of one string consistency, both when piping hot and moulding the mix into lemon sized balls after it cools down. Thank goodness they are not to be moulded when hot, you would say? Well well...that's definitely some relief but what happens when the mix is perfectly cold is something that most home makers dread predicting (although I believe many wouldn't accept the dread they feel).

The cold mix, on a perfect day, is as smooth as the smoothest and freshest play dough just brought out from a newly opened box. The ladoos turn out to be soft and hold shape without refrigeration. Alas, this is not something that happens very often. More often than not, the cold mix turns into something like the slime that kids just love playing with (and grandma says the chashni wasn't cooked right), or it turns into the hardest material after a diamond (oh you cooked the sugar syrup too much), or it feels like preloved play dough; one that has been exposed to air before (oh you didn't use enough ghee), or it turns into unseen and unheard of states of matter that are explained using a cold shrug followed by "You will get it right with experience" or "What were you thinking? Chashni is not easy!"

On the rare occasion that this ladoo blesses a lady she resolves to do it again and then the temperamental ladoo acts on a whim, takes on a life and decides what form to take to shock the lady.

There are some really blessed women who do manage to get it right every single time. They become the chosen ones who are revered and asked for tips on getting the recipe right and they still send their disciples sniffing away in adjoining rooms!!

Disclaimer: The ladoos in the photo were made using an alternate recipe that didn't involve sniffing or burning any fingers!