Haluvidhaa

Some of us went to a party. There, we devoured a homemade biriyani and a very delectable dry curry made with brinjals and chicken livers. But the star of the night, as all of us who went there agreed, was the haluvidhaa. It had a very special melt-in-your mouth quality and it seemed to hit the sweet spot between creaminess, sweetness and that jelly like quality of haluvidhaa.

We found out who made it and as it turned out, one of us is related to her. She’s a very shy type of person and therefore, we can’t tell you her name. But below is the recipe she shared with us, and we are very happy to tell you that it tasted just like hers when we tested it out.

She did ask us to include a bit of maafen in it if we can find it; we couldn’t, hence the omission. She also taught us how to check whether the agar agar has dissolved properly during the cooking process and you can read more about it in the instructions below. However, the most interesting bit of the conversation we had was about the amount of agar agar we were going to use. She asked us how much haluvidhaa we wanted to make, we said we wanted to make it from an entire agar agar packet, and to our surprise, she said ‘well, in that case, leave a little bit of the packet unused. If you put too much agar agar in it, it’s going to turn out too firm.’

Ingredients:

• 7 cups water (2 cups for soaking the agar agar and 5 cups for cooking)
• 1 packet agar agar (we used one with a dark blue label. It had 20 grams)
• 1 ½ cans sweetened condensed milk (we used Double Peach)
• Few drops of food colouring

Instructions:

1. Take the agar agar out of the packaging and by using a good clean pair of scissors snip off a ten-inch chunk of the agar agar. This is the portion we are going to use. (You’ll have a few inches remaining, and you can discard it or save it for later.)
2. Cut the agar agar into small pieces, roughly around 2 cm in length (it'll be around 1 & 2/3 cups when cut). Place them in a bowl together with 2 cups of water, and let it soak while you take care of the step 3 below.
3. In a large pot, bring 5 cups of water to a boil.
4. Once the water begins to boil, add the agar agar that you soaked earlier and keep stirring continuously until the agar agar has dissolved. Keep the heat on medium while you do this. And here’s how you check whether it’s dissolved: take a slotted spoon or anything else with a hole in it, dip it into the mixture, take it out, and if the mixture covers the hole, like a film, this means it’s all good. If this doesn’t happen, just cook for a little bit longer and test again.
5. When the agar agar has dissolved, turn off the stove. Add the condensed milk and the food colouring. Mix it well. As you might have noticed, we didn’t use any sugar in this recipe as the condensed milk is really sweet. But if you want to add sugar, do it at this step and make sure you stir it enough to completely dissolve it.
6. Sieve the mixture on to a tray or container. You’ll need something around 15 inches in length for this quantity. Or you could just set it in a couple of smaller trays. Aim for a thickness of an inch. After you’ve sieved it, use a spoon to scoop the little bubbles on top.
7. Allow the haluvidhaa to set. We kept it in the fridge for around one and a half hours. Slice it before serving and that’s it.