Semolina Pudding (Sooji Payesh)

This dish is a variation of the traditional rice pudding, which is served commonly in many Mediterranean and other countries of the Indian subcontinent. Semolina or Sooji, as it is called in Hindi, is a coarse flour made from durum wheat. I had bought this ingredient a while back with the hope that I would be able to make a dessert that would be appealing to my daughter’s fickle taste buds.

For someone like me who does not have a sweet tooth, making a dessert is a big challenge. Hence, I really appreciate a dessert that is not only easy to make but tastes great. And in the end when the cooking is done, I must have time and energy left for garnishing the dish :-)


Ingredients:

Semolina (Sooji) – half cup
Evaporated milk – 2 cans of 12 fl oz each
Organic brown sugar – to taste
Jaggery/molasses made from dates or sugarcane – optional
Pistachios and slivered almonds


I dry roasted about two fists full of semolina in an iron wok for about 5-7 minutes until the white color changed slightly brownish. (Yes, you read that right - I cook using my fist, pinch and dash as a measurement. I am sure all you busy moms and homemakers, reading this recipe, do the same too.)

Next, I added the evaporated milk to the dry-roasted semolina and stirred continuously. Whoever has cooked kheer or Indian pudding before must know by now that stirring is an important step in making this dish. Something that I learned after living in this country and really appreciate about evaporated milk, is that it is already cooked halfway for the process of making kheer. So, you are cooking this dish for half the time than your mom or grandma did before evaporated milk was invented! Whoever invented evaporated milk, bless their souls!

When the mixture of semolina and evaporated milk in the wok has reached a desired consistency, add the brown sugar. I prefer unbleached sugar in my cooking unless I absolutely need to use white sugar. It not only helps you eat organic but also imparts the smell of sweet natural sugar to your dish. I turned off the heat and then added some ground sugarcane jaggery (patali in Bengali). It imparts a sweet flavor to your dessert and makes it an instant hit. This ingredient’s flavor also sets aside your dessert from the ordinary rice pudding. Just taste once or twice to see how much sweet you want your dessert to be. Because this is warm when you are tasting, remember that when this dish is cooler, it will taste sweeter. After cooling the dish, I added some slivered almond and pistachios to garnish.

I have heard different variations of making kheer from friends – some use bisquick, some use half and half, some use whole milk, etc. Also, you can use par-cooked rice or vermicelli for this dessert instead of semolina.

I know you are still thinking about the ultimate question – did it appeal to the little one’s taste buds? That's a whole different story but I can tell you that everyone else loved it ;-)