The sweet rewards of Procrastination... (Diwali)

A couple of weeks ago, I celebrated Diwali - which is often referred to as the “Festival of Lights”. I had literally just moved house and things were too chaotic for me to publish a Diwali blogpost at the time. However, as some parts of India are now enjoying the festival of “Karthigai Deepam” which, like Diwali, involves lots of light and sparkles through the lighting of diyas (small oil lamps), candles and fireworks, I thought I would put my little, Diwali post up today whilst all the lights are shimmering happily in the current celebrations.

I have loved Diwali since I was little and this is primarily down to two key factors — 1. all the sparkling lights and 2. all the mithai (Indian sweets)! Mithai comes in 100s of forms and flavours and is probably the most common gift exchanged between family and friends during these celebrations. Nowadays, it is relatively easy to buy mithai and making it at home is considered too time consuming in today’s busy world. After all, who has time to stand around grinding nuts into fine nut-flour and stirring pots of milk for hours on end? (Me, it turns out.)

I’ve said in some of my “recipe” posts here before that I am quite a lazy writer. I am also quite the procrastinator, something which is both a blessing and a curse. My primary procrastination techniques have always been cooking and baking. This is a blessing for those who I am cooking for as they can enjoy whatever has been made but it’s a curse for me. . . no matter how delicious a fresh biryani, lasagne, focaccia or cake might be. . . they have never contributed to getting any items on my “to-do” list ticked off. Whilst surveying my new home and the dozens of brown boxes which needed unpacking and the empty cupboards which needed filling/organising and the furniture which needed to be built, I decided it would be a great idea to unpack the bare minimum of my kitchen and make my own mithai from scratch for Diwali.

My list of “moving in” tasks was as long as my arm. . . yet this detour into the kitchen became my clear priority. Whereas for the few days before I couldn’t find any motivation to begin unpacking even just a few boxes of my things, here I was methodically working through the list of required ingredients, pans and utensils with the diligence of Mary Poppins. I then went online and read recipes and watched YouTube videos as if I was researching for a PhD. . . all the while my unpacking remained untouched and my new furniture remained in flatpack form. Ignoring the chaos around me, I chose to make two types of mithai which I have never made before and I chose them because they were favourites of both of my grandmas.

The first one I made was “Kaju Katli” (have a look at the little video reel below) -it is almost like a fudge but without any butter - it is made with cashew nuts, water, sugar, a little ground cardamom and, in my case, quite a bit of rose water. Traditionally it is decorated with real gold or silver leaf and is cut into diamond shapes. The second one I made is called “Kalakand” —which uses milk two ways (condensed and as fresh, curd cheese) and took much longer to make. In my very thorough research phase, I found many recipes which said you could use tinned, condensed milk and ready made paneer or ricotta cheese instead of doing it all from scratch. Using both of those cheat ingredients could have had the whole thing done in less than 15 mins.

However, as I am a procrastination pro, these “save-yourself-some-time” tips were of no interest to me. I patiently reduced pints/gallons of whole milk until it was thick and also made the curd cheese from scratch. The freshly made condensed milk and curd cheese are then combined, cooked a little further, sweetened and then flavoured with a little rosewater and plenty of ground cardamom before being left to cool and set ready to be decorated with nuts and rose petals for some visual va-va-voom. I am sure that, if I make Kalakand again, I will use all the cheats. . . unless, I have a pressing list of urgent chores to do -- in which case I will probably go to a farm and milk a cow myself first too!

It wasn’t all about procrastination, of course. Diwali is a time for family, love, celebration and optimism and like many people this year, because of lockdown, I was not able to celebrate with all of my immediate family together in one house. So I wanted to be able to gift something which I had made myself. From start to finish, I truly did stir in my love, best wishes and prayers in the hope that whoever ate the sweets would feel the love that had gone into them. . . and I think that they did. Will I make this mithai again? Maybe the next time I move house!

Given the year that we have all navigated so far, I would like to take this moment to send love and light to you all and to wish for brighter and happier times ahead to share with those you love. And now I really do need to get back to my To-Do list!