Aval Payasam – Dessert of Gods! Indian Milk Pudding with Brown Rice Flakes.

At times, some people we come across at various phases in life leave a long lasting impression on us, no matter how short the span of interaction was….it could be just a one time meeting or a day’s interaction or for a season or more…..they touch our lives and leave their handprints and become part of our life and memory.

This post is about one such person and her mother who are part of my college life and still holds a special place in my heart…….because that mother once served me one of the tastiest and yet simplest payasam/milk pudding for the first time in my life…..from then onwards , that particular dessert competed for the first place in my list of favourites, along with Paalada Pradhaman and Parippu Pradhaman, though I was never fortunate to taste it one more time. Another thing that stuck with me was the grace on that mother’s face…… a beautiful woman,fair complexioned with black curly locks of hair and a small red dot on her forehead ! And then there is her daughter, my firend, Anj - a chubby bubbly girl who was/is in love with music with a serious crush on the singer, Unnikrishnan those days…..and we used every opportunity to tease her :)

Often times when CJJ and I refresh our college days and exchange stories of the bygone era, I always notice a recurring phenomenon in my thought process and that is, Anj’s mom’s Aval Payasam and one more episode often gets pulled back into my active memory shelf and each time whenever I mention that episode , I see CJJ chuckling and that’s something precious as he is someone who believes that I crack jokes only once a year and he keeps count on any addition of my yearly quota!!!

Well, the only thing I remember about that episode is a close friend of ours telling me, trying to control her laughter badly, “ you know what….our Anj got into an empty bus last evening and she tried to get the best seat and finally ended up standing till her stop !! “ Whenever I try to visualise that episode , I always burst into laughter and after more than a decade, I happened to get back in touch with Anj through one of the social networking sites and on one of the mails, I forced to narrate the story in her own words and here’s an an excerpt from the mail:

“……Ah..ha S…….i still remember the day as if it were yesterday..am surprised u have forgotten….anyways…”I was the hapless victim”..so maybe that’s why I remember it more..that day we already had gone to ann’s during the lunch break..we waited in those ann’s steps for 1 hour but we didn’t get our fav’rite chocolate donuts so we(me, A and S) went back again in the evening and bought donuts from ann’s …A bought those cream puffs..which we both never liked..was tooooooooo creamy…anyway..i remember this because my hands were full…donuts plus all those M&B’s from library which I used to read like mad(esp.during Sr. B’s class…)…..when we finally reached the bus stop we were so tired we allowed atleast 5-6 buses to pass..for an empty bus..and then came our “eagle” :) :)….I was the first one to get inside the bus…I sat on one seat..then decided that was not good enough(cos it was just opp the driver.).then I got up and went to another seat..that one was the aisle seat..and I wanted a window one…I got up…and went to another seat..but somebody pushed me aside..so tried another one..again was pushed by someone..finally…I was the only one standing in the bus..everyone else got a seat x-cept me…by that time all were laughing their heads off…that was o.k…but there was this one lady who kept looking at me ..and then laughing..so hard ..she was actually crying.. and that too at regular intervals..till we reached the stop….i swear even the bus driver and’ killi’ were laughing at me…I never got inside that “eagle” bus again…and I doubt whether I’ll ever tell this story to my daughter…but u know what..those donuts got crushed…:( :(.. “

:)

A week back, I was watching TV and they were airing Seinfeld’s Subway episode and to me , the scene where Kramer travels in train seemed to be the sitcom representation of this episode I was referring to . Watch the scene HERE.

Anyway, on my request Anj gave me the recipe for Aval Payasam too.This is what she mailed me:”…. Hey! Here’s the recipe u asked “ For 1/2 a litre of milk….take 1 big handful of brown aval(not white)…amma said “oru valliya pidi “aval…wash and drain the aval(this process should be really fast..aval should not be soaking wet).Now fry this in about 1 tbsp of ghee…till u get a nice smell…add this to the boiled milk…add about 1 –heaped glass of sugar (our typical steel glass)..and continue cooking in a nice thick uruli till the payasam gets condensed and becomes a rich pink colour…u have to keep stirring in between,…this payasam does not reqire any garnishings like cashew,kismis or elakka..in fact that spoils the taste..it should just have that “vattiya” taste,,and the taste of the brown aval…”

Here’s how I translated her mother’s instructions into cup and spoon measurements :

Ingredients:

• ½ cup brown rice flakes/Aval (chemba aval)/beaten rice
• 1 tbsp ghee/clarified butter
• 2 1/3 cup milk
• ½ cup sugar or to taste

Directions:

• In a thick bottom vessel or Uruli, a wide mouthed bell metal vessel, heat milk and bring to a boil.
• While milk is heating up, give brown rice flakes/Aval a quick rinse in cold water and dry immediately with a kitchen napkin. Heat ghee/clarified butter in a shallow pan, and fry brown rice flakes/Aval for a minute, till ghee is coated well and a nice aroma comes.
• When milk comes to a boil, add the ghee-fried brown rice flakes/Aval and stir well in medium heat. Now, add sugar and stir well until it dissolves into the milk. At this stage, reduce heat and let it simmer for a while, about 20-30 minutes, until it thickens to the consistency of a Payasam.

Verdict: This serves two adults but if you have a spouse like mine - who does not miss any single opportunity to dissuade me from making payasam, relished major portion of it and left some, may be less than a quarter portion, feeling guilty that he should not do such a thing to me - it is better to increase the proportions and this happened not just once, but twice. I guess that says how divine tasting it is .

Now that I used the word divine tasting , let me share one more line from my friend’s mail, “…a speciality ‘nevidhyam’ for sree Krishna…amma usually makes this payasam for sree Krishna jayanthi..for the little Krishna…according to the hindu mythology is a big fan of both aval and paal payasam and with this dish he gets the best of both!!!!”

I know this has been a really long post for a simple recipe but as I started pouring my thoughts on the same, I lost sense of the length of the post……

Related Posts:

Luv

Shn

No part of the content ( articles, photographs, recipes) of this blog may be reproduced without my written permission.Copyright © 2007-2010 Kitchenmishmash.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.