Week Seventeen – Bombay Halwa

Lots gets said about supermarkets.

Apparently, they are potentially a great place to go if you want to find a girlfriend, sate the inbuilt British need to join a queue and, rumour has it, buy some food.

I’ve never heard anyone say ‘My local Tesco provides a superb opportunity to expand my cultural horizons’.  Well, it does, and occasionally, I like to just hang around at the international food aisle.  Surely, it’s not just me that does it?  It’s a great opportunity to find out a little about how the World works – in terms of packet foods – and grow as a person.  You never know, one day, maybe, I might even catch the gaze of a Polish princess across a tub of paprykarz szczeciński, fall in love, go join the excitingly long queue at the ‘five items or less’ check-out and then go and live happily ever after  in a castle just outside Warsaw.

I’ve just done a quick bit of research and it appears that Poland no longer has a monarchy (and hasn’t done for at least a couple of hundred years). This may hamper my dreams of hooking-up with a member of the Polish royal family somewhat. Some extended research (I clicked a link within the first website I found) however, has revealed that there is still a surviving princess – Princess Anna Christina Radziwill.   Hope restored!  Although, she seems to live in New York, which severely limits the chances that we’ll bump into each other in a shop in Woking.  She is also fifty-two and therefore slightly out of my preferred age-range (18 – 50 years old).  Two hundred years down the line and the fact that there isn’t a monarchy anymore, also means there is probably a bit of doubt as to the officialness of her ‘princess’ title.

Maybe I should loiter around the Thai section – I know that there is definitely a current royal family, including a Princess Bajrakitiyabha, who, while not especially local, does meet my age preferences.

How’s that for going off at a tangent?

Well, today, I was the only person in the supermarket equivalent of UNESCO, so had to bolster my knowledge of the wider-world solely by scouring the tightly-packed shelves for a sight of a new food.  Something I hadn’t eaten before…

And there it was, something new – A packet of Bombay Halwa mix. I’d definitely never eaten that before. I’d never even heard of it.

Pronounced ‘Halva’

It is a powdered dessert mix that I just needed to add milk to and boil.

Ingredients list in British AND American – Who’d have thought I was fluent in both?

For a moment, I considered getting the video camera out and filming my own cookery programme to visually chart  my culinary progress – Something along the lines of the always entertaining ‘Floyd on Fish’, but I hadn’t quite had enough to drink and I wasn’t preparing fish.  I’m also pretty sure you’ve all probably seen enough of my face during my ‘I’m going to film myself attempting to break the world record for speed-eating pickled eggs’ phase anyway.

According to the spiel on the packet, Bombay Halwa is a ‘famous soufflé that is cherished throughout Asia’.  It is also very filling, which ‘makes it a favourite for weight-watchers’ and ‘its cooling nature helps beat the heat in summer’.  Well, aren’t they lucky to get warm summers in Asia?

Maybe don’t try to take this through customs…

Preparation was also complete in three easy steps: –

(1)   Mix packet contents with 500ml of milk in a saucepan

(2)   Bring to the boil, stirring continuously

(3)   Pour into dish and leave to set for thirty minutes

I reckoned that even I could cope with that.  Just in case, I watched the handy video: –

http://youtu.be/2USQc-xtK1s As easy as 1-2-3…

Would you have preferred this picture to me fronting my own cookery programme?

I followed the steps and waited half an hour.  It still hadn’t set, so I popped it into the fridge for a while.  Three hours later it had failed to reach the point of what I would consider set…  It obviously was one of those things that remained a combination of slimy and wobbly – A bit like jelly, I guess.

Close enough…

I cut the Bombay Halwa into slices and attempted to re-create the serving suggestion on the packet.

It had the consistency of blancmange, and, if I’m honest didn’t really taste of much.  Milky, gelatinous (does that count as a taste adjective?) and slightly nutty.

Much in the way that I couldn’t tell if beetroot juice lowered my blood pressure, I couldn’t really judge if the halwa cooled me down – It was cold, because it had just come out of the fridge, so I imagine it must have had a small-scale temporary effect on, at the very least,  the temperature of my tongue. It didn’t really satisfy my appetite because I ate some crisps immediately afterwards.

See you next week.  I’m off to Sainsbury’s to stand next to a jar of massaman curry paste and try to look alluring…