Week Twenty-Four – Mix Mathai

This week’s entry is brought to you in association with Cock Soup – When you just have to have a warming meal that matches your personality!

We shall call this week ‘International Cake Week’…  Or the ‘Week I Ingested Too Many E-Numbers and Got a Bit Twitchy’… If I say anything controversial or type anything along the lines of sckjsdvkjvfdbkvs cnvdjvdSNDFH, I fully blame it on the side-effects of E102 and E124 – More on this later…  Unless I’ve got distracted and gone somewhere to jump up and down or disappeared next door to shout random Mork & Mindy quotes at the neighbours.

Anyway…

This was the week I decided that I would expand my horizons and leave Morrison’s well alone and try to find a food first outside of the international food aisle I’ve loitered in for most of my free time in 2013.

As luck would have it, I stumbled across an Asian food store on a random trip to deepest, darkest Crawley during a futile mission to get some new pants.  If you are interested (and I hope you are):  According to the Internet, Crawley is home to three Grade I listed buildings, it is the place where Daley Thompson used facilities to train for the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games and is also the site of the headquarters of Novo Nordisk (This particular fact is not especially interesting at the moment, but I have a feeling may prove more so at some point in the near future).

Not mentioned on the Internet (until now, I guess), is that Crawley is also the place I discovered Mix Mathai – a hefty plastic tub of brightly-coloured, sugar-rich, snack-sized desserts.

Rather disappointingly, Crawley didn’t seem to be creepy in the slightest.

Potential Sugar Overload! Did you know that Novo Nordisk is, perhaps, the world’s largest producer of insulin – which I might need to offset the diabetes-inducing results if I decided to eat all of these delights in one go. See, I told you it was interesting!

Mathai (or Mithai) is the Hindustani word for confectionery or sweets.  The selection that I now had in my possession included eight different mini cakes – most of which resembled other foods I had eaten before (not necessarily cakes, though) – and would provide a pretty substantial dessert for the evening meal.  They are traditionally eaten at special events like weddings and celebrations for the birth of a child.  As none of these occasions were at my disposal at the time of eating, I would just have to consider pudding an event of note…  Which, I guess, it is.

Warning: Contains nuts and causes nuts!

There was a warning on the label that colourings ‘E102 and E124 may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children’… Research has suggested that these two can cause tantrums in the young.  Also, given that the lead ingredient was listed as ‘sugar’, I’d imagine that this too would cause a similar adverse effect on behaviour in general and ruin, at least, a good night’s sleep.  I was a little concerned that I would become an absolute potential-ADHD nightmare if I sat down and ate the whole tub’s-worth in a single sitting.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t a massive fan of any of the mathai – They all tasted as if they were all a little bit undercooked, excessively sugary and perhaps, in time, will make me want to have a tantrum for the first time since about 1985.

If you are allergic to food colouring, look away now…

I have not been able to find out any of the names of the individual cakes (although, one might possibly be called barfi, which is appetising).  As a result, I have had to make up my own in the upcoming list.

In the interest of semi-completeness, here is a synopsis of my findings in bullet-point list form: –

• The one that looked like a prawn ball, tasted like a disappointing doughnut and anything that disappoints as a doughnut is… well… for want of a better word… disappointing.
• The pink one had the consistency of a gooey dolly mixture.  I only like the jelly ones, so this was never going to work.
• The mauve one was the same as the pink one, only mauve.
• The green one – possibly a pistachio barfi – was the same as the pink and the mauve one, only green and more nutty.
• The one that looked like millionaire’s shortbread was pretty significantly soggy bottomed. Anything with a soggy bottom is just never going to be good [Note the Great British Bake Off reference to show just how up-to-date I am with the culinary world].  I once had a hamster with wet tail, and that was just horrendous.
  

  Frodo – In his pre-wet tail pomp.  I miss him!

• The one that looked like a chunk of salmon/watermelon hybrid appeared to defy the laws of science (the hybridization of a fish and a fruit excepted) by being hard to slice with a knife, but melt in the mouth when eaten.  Can anyone explain how this is possible?

I didn’t quite manage to eat all of the mathai in one go – They were a bit rich and sugary for that – but I gave it a good go.  I appeared to have escaped the effect of the dreaded e-numbers too, which was a bonus.

Right, see you all next time…  I’m just off to see what the neighbours are up to…  NANOO NANOO!