Strawberry Sheera and Blueberry Sheera

Happy Dassra everyone. I made these today to celebrate the festival. This is the first time I tried both. A friend had recently mentioned having eaten strawberry sheera. So as I was racking my brains deciding what sweet to make for today, this suddenly came back. After doing some research online, I decided to try both kinds since I had a box of both berries.

Here's how I made the Strawberry Sheera:

3/4 cup medium rava/semolina/sooji
1/2 cup ghee/clarified butter
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup strawberry puree
2 tsp sweetened condensed milk
1/4 tsp cardamon pwd
Few strawberries and nuts to garnish

First, melt the ghee in a large wok. Add the rava and fry on medium low heat for abt 15 mins till fragrant.

In the meanwhile warm the milk up in the microwave. Add to the roasted rava. Puree about 12 medium sized strawberries. If you wish you can strain the puree, but I did not do this and the end product was still smooth, with excellent flavor of the strawberry puree.

Add the strawberry puree when the milk has been absorbed in the rava.

Add the sugar, mix well. My strawberries were not very sweet, hence I added sugar equal to quantity of rava. Rava will loosen at this point. Keeping cooking on medium low heat, it will thicken up again. Add the condensed milk and cardamon pwd. Mix again. Cook, stirring occasionally till the ghee starts leaving the sides of the pan. I wanted to make this sheera into wadis or barfi like pieces, so I cooked additional 10 mins.

Then spread the mix onto a greased thali.

Mark the desired shapes on the spread sheera...

....and garnish with fresh strawberries. Let cool completely, keep in the fridge if weather is warm. When cool/chilled, cut completely and remove each individual piece.

I followed the same procedure for the blueberry sheera, but I did strain the blueberry puree. Also, I did not shape these into wadis/burfis.

Here, my strawberry and blueberry sheera is ready to be distributed to friends.

Brown rice, quinoa, moong pulav

I made this pulav for a potluck at my yoga teacher's place. It was well appreciated, hence thought of posting.

I cooked the brown rice and quinoa together in the pressure cooker for 2 whistles. I sprouted the moong beans for abt 2 days. To make the pulav, I heated little olive oil in a wok, added cumin seeds and fried them for a minute. Then added some chopped onions and fried them for 5 mins. Next went in some chopped tomatoes which I cooked down a bit for abt 5 mins. I added frozen mix vegetables and again cooked it all for 5 mins. Then I added the sprouted moong, grated ginger, garlic paste, cumin pwd, coriander pwd, pav bhaji masala, little garam masala pwd and kitchen king masala pwd. Gave it all a good stir and cooked it covered till the veggies were cooked. Then mixed in the cooked and cooled brown rice and quinoa, salt and sugar. Gently folded it in with the veggies and steamed for a few mins on low heat. That's it. Garnished with some chopped cilantro.

The moong beans give it a good little crunch, in addition to being super healthy.