Recipe collected by Sakina Ghatalah, Fall 2020
Food sharing is a big part of many cultures. When the food being shared comes from one source or platter, it cements a bond as family or friends are being nourished from the same source. It's more collectivistic and you're forced to consider the other people you are sharing the food with, making sure others have enough to eat and that everyone is enjoying the meal. This is one of the things that has been changed by the pandemic. However, we’ve had to adjust. Through all the Eids that have happened in the last few months, there have been lots of containers being passed around and doorbells being rung as my family dropped off kheer for neighbors and they’ve dropped off desserts for us.
Kheer is an indulgent dessert with the primary ingredients consisting of just rice, milk, and sugar. Of course, if you'd like to get fancy with it, there are ways to add complexity to the desert through both aroma and taste. Depending on where you are from, it can be thin and runny, with the rice adding just a hint of texture or it can be thick and chunky. How you break up the rice will make that distinction. My grandma loves a thin kheer, the smooth mixture pours into bowls without a plop and has a slick sheen about it. Thus, despite me liking a chunky kheer, when I made it for the last eid, I made sure to crush the rice finer and add more milk for the desired runny consistency.
Kheer is a part of celebrating for many eids. We usually make enough so those family members and friends that come to celebrate or wish us can have a chilled bowl, filled to the brim of course and topped with sliced almonds and crushed pistachios. I get so happy when I eat kheer, it's simplicity is addicting and my brain knows that if I’m eating it, it’s gonna be a good day.
Ingredients:
½ cup of rice soaked
4-8 cups of whole milk
½-1 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of ghee/butter/oil
5-8 cardamom pods crushed
¼ cup crushed pistachios and sliced almonds (optional but very good), save some to garnish with as well
Directions:
Soak the rice in water for 20 minutes. Crush a little or a lot depending on the thickness you'd like.
Get a big pot and put the ghee. After it melts, add the crushed cardamom pods. Stir until it becomes aromatic.
Mix in the soaked and drained rice. Stir with the ghee and cardamom pods until everything is well incorporated and aromatic.
Add 4 cups of the milk. Stir until everything is well combined and then leave on medium-high heat so that the milk will start to become foamy. Stir occasionally in between too.
After the milk foams over, mix and lower the heat. Cover the pot and let simmer. Stir mixture occasionally to make sure it's not burning though.
After the rice is cooked it will look very big but separate from the milk. Keep the heat going and mix. If you have a hand blender you can use that or you could just have crushed the rice in the beginning.
Let it cook on relatively low heat for the rest of the steps. Then after the milk and rice are both thickened, add more milk. The mixture will thicken after it cools too so adding more milk would not mean it would be runny. Adding 3-4 more cups in intervals will still result in a very thick kheer. After adding each cup of mix, allow it to combine with the rest of the kheer and thicken as well before adding more. You could use any kind of milk here; it doesn't have to be whole milk.
After the mixture is thickened and to the desired consistency, add in the sugar in intervals.
If the sweetness is to your liking, add in some slivered almonds and crushed pistachios and mix in.
Let it cook on low heat for a few minutes. Then turn off heat, check that you like everything, and then it's ready to serve. You can also chill for a couple hours and then serve because Kheer cold is an experience on its own. Garnish with almonds and pistachios if you’d like and that's it!