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
   

Some delicious cakes ...

One of my simple pleasures during the week is getting up early on a Saturday morning – before the rest of the household has woken – to browse the international papers on the ‘net.   I usually confine myself to the Melbourne Age – where I come from! – then the UK papers  - The Guardian, The Independent and The Telegraph, and then across the pond to the US – The New York Times, The LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
What distinguishes all these papers - aside from their extensive coverage of international affairs from various perspectives – is that they all have brilliant food and dining sections.  

Dan Lepard

Apart from sporadic coverage in all papers at various times during the week, the Saturday edition is when they all post more in-depth articles and recipes about food and travel-related stories from around the globe.


One of the columns I eagerly look for in The Guardian is that of Dan Lepard, a London-based baker, photographer, cooking teacher and writer.   Funnily enough, Dan Lepard was originally from Melbourne but has lived in the UK for many years.

Aside from his regular weekly column(s) in the newspaper, Dan has written a number of books on baking including “The Handmade Loaf” – about various European artisanal bread styles, and most recently “Short & Sweet: The Best of Home Baking”.

“Short & Sweet” is a comprehensive compendium of baking and is on par in its depth with Stephanie Alexander’s “A Cook’s Companion” (see my earlier post) and Nigella Lawson’s first book “How To Eat”.  It’s index covers the whole gamut of baking – breads, cakes, biscuits, desserts and suppers – and its wide reaching and original recipes and concise and clear delivery are truly impressive.  

Two recipes I have tried just in the past week are the ‘Jammy Lamingtons’ and the ‘Bourbon Pecan Brownies’ (which I altered slightly ingredients-wise); both recipes were easy to follow and the results - according to my kid’s taste/level of interest index- were outstanding.

Jammy Lamingtons 

I had to make these as the first recipe to try in the book as they are an Australian classic – well some would say ‘cliché’ but I would say ‘retro-classic’!   Lamingtons are one of those iconic Australian recipes that our mother’s used to cook for afternoon teas in the 1950s and ‘60s.   They were subsequently lampooned mercilessly by Australian comedian Barry Humphries’ alter ego Dame Edna Everage during his/her stage shows in the 70s and 80s.

Basically a lamington is a sponge cake cut into brownie-shaped squares with fruit jam in the centre and rolled in chocolate and coconut flakes.   Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

For the cake:   3 Indian-sized eggs, separated    150g caster sugar   75g butter, softened   1 t vanilla essence   200g plain flour   2 ½ T cornflour   2 t baking powder   150ml milk  
For the coating:   4 T cocoa   125g icing sugar   125ml boiling water   25g chocolate, chopped   125g fruit jam   100g desiccated coconut
Method:

1/.   Heat oven to 180C or 160C fan forced.   Line 17cm square tin with baking paper.
2/.   Beat egg whites & 50g sugar to soft meringue stage.   In another bowl beat remaining sugar, butter, vanilla and egg yolks for 3 mins.  
3/.   Sift or mix flour, cornflour and baking powder together & then beat into the sugar, butter and egg yolks alternating with the milk.   Then beat in the meringue and scrape into cake tin.   Bake for 35 mins.
4/.   For the coating, whisk together cocoa, icing sugar and boiling water then stir in chocolate and put aside.   Trim cake into 8 rectangles, slice though the middle and spread jam across one side.  Put back together and then dip in chocolate on all sides then roll in coconut & rest on a plate.

Bourbon Pecan Brownies (my Indian version!)

I followed the basic recipe for these brownies but swapped the bourbon and pecan nuts for more readily available ingredients in India - dark rum and almonds; they still turned out very moist and chocolatey!
Ingredients:

200g cooking chocolate   125g butter   2 eggs (I used 3 Indian-sized eggs)   125g brown sugar      100g caster sugar   75ml of bourbon (I substituted dark rum)   2 t vanilla essence   175g plain flour   1 T cocoa   125g pecan nuts (I substituted unpeeled almonds), roughly chopped   

Method:

1/.   Heat oven to 190C or 170C fan forced.   Line a 20cm square cake tin with foil. (Note: this saved on buttering or papering the pan and worked really well.)
2/.   Melt chocolate with butter and mix (I used a microwave- pulsing for 20 secs at a time and  stirring at the intervals.)   Beat eggs with the 2 different sugars until mix has integrated and become creamy beige.   Beat chocolate and butter into egg & sugar bowl & mix.   Add rum and vanilla essence.
3/.   Sift flower & cocoa in a bowl (I just stir them together several times), and beat into chocolate mixture.   Then mix in chopped almonds.
4/.   Scrape into the cake tin and cook in oven for 25 mins.   Rest for 15 mins before turning out and cutting into square bars.  

Hope you enjoy them!

Tony saab/Hyderabad   June 2012