Thankful you were born!

It was M's birthday yesterday, yay! But poor him, he was working all day :( He had been really busy the whole weekend and so there wasn't anything special planned for his special day. I thought I'd make something sweet to say 'thank you' to God for making him especially for me :) So I made kesaribhath/suji ka halwa/shira. It's really simple, gets done in a jiffy and tastes great. Here's the recipe -

1 cup semolina (rava/sooji)
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups milk
2 tbspns ghee
1 small banana, chopped
a pinch of cardamom powder
a handful of raw cashews and sultanas

• Heat about 1/2 a tbspn of ghee in a non-stick wok/pan. Roast cashews and sultanas until the cashews turn a light brown. Remove and keep aside.
• With the ghee in the wok, tip in the semolina and roast until light brown and toasty.
• Meanwhile heat the milk on HIGH in a microwave for about a minute. You could even heat it on the stove top.
• Once the semolina is roasted, turn down the heat to low and pour in the hot milk. Please be very cautious as you do so - apparently the roasted semolina and hot milk are long lost friends who get really excited when they see each other! Jokes apart, the hot steam from the hot milk and the hot wok (wow! that's a lot of 'hot')...so please be careful, don't burn yourself!
• Keep stirring to avoid lumps. The idea is to cook the semolina in the milk and it happens quite quickly, in about 2 minutes.
  
• When the mixture kind of begins to turn dry, add the sugar.
• As you mix everything, you'll notice that the mixture begins to turn liquid-ey again. Now work quickly and throw in all the other stuff - chopped banana, cashews and sultanas, cardamom powder and the remaining ghee.
• Stir it for a couple of minutes until it all amalgamates well and turn off the heat.
• Serve hot!

It's best you stash it in the fridge if you've made lots and reheat it just before serving.
I'd earlier posted a recipe for kesaribhath, but I'd made it with chopped pineapple and it's a slightly different recipe in that I used water instead of milk.

So, no fancy cake or cocktail party snacks for M's special day this year, just a humble and yummy sweet dish, which he thoroughly enjoyed. And that's exactly what I wanted, after all :)