Lord Ganesha & the Italian Grandmother's Semolina Cake

Lord Ganesha in the waters off Chowpatty Beach, Bombay

Last Wednesday here in Hyderabad we celebrated the birthday of Lord Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god worshipped across India as the god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune.   It’s a public holiday in many parts of the country and, like most religious festivals across the subcontinent,  everybody joins in to some extent – Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians ... and even atheistic foreigners!


Buying the flowers at the local market



Eco-friendly clay Ganeshas

Fresh garlands of flowers

Fruits and leaves to adorn the Ganesh statue

 We usually start the day by going to the local village to purchase a Ganesh statue and the accompanying flowers, food and banana leaves that are all part of the ritual on the first day of what is know as Ganesha Chaturthi – a 10 day festival  celebrated each year  in September which ends with the immersion of the idol in water bodies - usually lakes and seafronts around the country.


 



Some of these statues can be several metres high and each village or locality builds the biggest Ganesha they can afford in a sort of ethereal contest of the town’s spiritual worth.  The bigger statues have to be lowered into the water off the back of trucks with cranes especially installed for the festival.   In Bombay, where we lived for a couple of years, more than a million people crowd Chowpatty Beach to see the final immersion of the Ganesh statues.

Our ritual is a little more low key.  We always buy an eco-friendly Ganesh made of clay ... which dissolves easily in water ... unlike many of the giant plaster statues which, along with the often garish oil-based paint used to decorate them, are a major pollution problem once the festival is over.  


Preparing the table



Lighting the incense



Breaking the coconut

Our Ganesh statue will stay with us for 10 days

 The statue is placed on banana leaves on a table and surrounded by fresh fruit and leaves.  Then one of the ladies who works with us will recite a Hindu prayer, incense is waved over the statue and a coconut is broken in honour of Lord Ganesh.   The two halves are then placed on the table and each of us is marked on the forehead with red vermilion powder.

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!

 This year we celebrated with a low key Indian lunch but as plans for dinner took shape I was in the mood for something different.   This is where the Italian grandmother’s semolina cake appears!


I have this fabulous baking book called  “Classic Home Desserts: A Treasury of Heirloom and Contemporary Recipes”, written by an American writer and cookbook author Richard Sax.  It’s a compendium of mostly American dessert recipes – though many are influenced by early migrant families from across Europe – and is an engaging mix of recipes, historical and anecdotal notes about cooks and quotes from literary works across 200 years of American and English history.    It was first published in 1994 and won many awards before being republished a few years ago.   (Sadly, Richard Sax died in 1995 from lung cancer at the age of 46.)

One of the standout recipes in the book is called “A Semolina Ring Cake from Friuli”; Friuli is Italy’s most north-eastern region (the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was born there) and has its own distinctive food culture.   This recipe, which is over 100 years old, found its way into the book via an Italian chef’s grandmother.

My Italian semolina ring cake

I really liked this recipe upon first reading because: (1) it used Italian semolina flour, which I happened to have found surprisingly in an Indian supermarket and (2) it used unpeeled almonds!   You simply put the flour, sugar and unpeeled almonds into a blender and zap at high speed until its a fine powder.  If you have ever peeled 30 or 40 almonds as I have many times, you’ll appreciate this alternative approach!

So this is what we had at the end of dinner last Wednesday night ... an historic Italian semolina cake to celebrate Lord Ganesha’s birthday!

SEMOLINA RING CAKE FROM FRIULI

Ingredients:  
2/3  C blanched or unblanched almonds    ¾ C semolina flour  1 C sugar   grated zest of 1 lemon – 2 in India as they are too small   6 eggs, separated    pinch salt    icing sugar for topping   Plus eggnog custard with rum    (Recipe also says you can serve it with fresh strawberries but they are not in season here.)

Method:     
Preheat oven to 180C degrees .   Butter and flour a cake tin – preferably a round bundt pan.  
Grind the almonds, flour and sugar in a food processor until powdery and then add lemon zest and all of the egg yolks.  Blend and set aside.

The batter after mixing in the beaten eggwhites

Beat the egg yolks and salt in a bowl until they nearly form stiff peaks.   Fold into the semolina- almond mixture and pour into the cake tin.  Bang the tin on a surface several times to settle the batter.
Bake the cake until top is lightly golden ... about 40 minutes worked for me.   Cool cake, run knife around edge of tin, invert onto another plate or cake stand.    Top with the icing sugar & serve with custard or icecream.

Note:   suggest you find a custard recipe you are familiar with and add 1 ½ tablespoons of dark rum.   Me? ... I fucked the custard up completely by overcooking it and making it curdle ... which is why I am not showing you a picture of it ... and is also why my dear departed mother would be utterly ashamed of me!

Nevertheless, the cake was an absolute classic ... beautifully light with a lemony almond aftertaste.   If you can’t make the custard serve it with icecream ... and have a dark rum and soda instead ... that’s what I did.

Tony saab, Hyderabad Sept 2012