Bombay Halva, Pondicherry Style

I’ve not been a huge halva fan, until now. The classic, commercial halvas, including the famous Tirunelveli halva of my own origins, were never favorites. They were oversweet, greasy, and garishly colored. I didn’t care for them.

That changed, the way these things do, because I found a path to these classic sweetmeats that embraces what matters (read: texture), rejects what doesn’t (read: color), adds in a dimension of flavor (read on for that!), and then because my father loves these halvas, and loves all the more that I can make them for him in ways that bring his home and his travels back to him when it most counts. This post is something of the story of how that happened.

Bombay halva is also called Karachi halva, though the oldest halwais might be in Old Delhi [Chaina Ram Sindhi Confectioners], or in Bombay [Punjabi Chandu Halwai]. Famed for Deepavali gifting as much as for their bright, fluorescent red-orange coloring, and that chewy glutinous texture which reminds me so much of Tirunelveli’s gothumai (wheat) halva, though this is made with corn starch (ahem, not corn flour!) or arrowroot.

I came to this halva not via Tirunelveli, but two other routes which made this very logical. First and earliest, there was my younger boy’s younger exhortation to continue to make fancy colored drinks from garden flora: “you’ve done blue, and red, so now finish the primary colors–do yellow,” he had said. That took me to the pavazhamalli, parijaat, Nyctanthes arbor-tristis, or the coral jasmine–which is also known as “poor man’s saffron” for it’s once-upon-a-time use in coloring the robes of Buddhist monks. I played with this flower’s colorant capacity in making yellow drinks, and then also played with its fragrance and unique bitter taste to flavor a floral rasam. And then struck upon the notion that this might well be the way to make a Bombay halva palatable, because it would be colored right, with parijaatam from the garden and not some garish, synthetic food coloring.

There was a second route in, as important, and this was corn. We’ve played for years with the old “three sisters” planting technique borrowed from the Native Americans, growing corn, beans and squashes together so the corn stalks act as beanpoles and the squashes meander on the ground left free beneath. Corn seems to appeal to our Nepali watchman’s sense of nostalgia enough that he plants it readily (& often delays getting beans and squashes in the ground so that destroys the timing needed to make this work, but that’s another story entirely). This is desi corn though, makkai, hard and chewy stuff made for roasting into buttas by roadsides, not the soft and genteel hybrid “American corn” that we get in frozen packets here. My first preoccupation with this has, as a result, been to make my own masa and my own masa harina by nixtamalising the corn with chunnambu or lime. That’s a long-overdue blog post which shall yet happen, but in the meantime this meant I always have on hand a fair quantity of masa harina and have used it to make many an atole, champurrado–and nicuatole.

For those of you who know Oaxacan foods, this pre-Columbian gelatinous dessert made from white corn will be familiar as a street food also, as it happens, colored brightly. It largely draws on the gelatinous properties of corn starches, extracted, much like Tirunelveli halva does from samba gothumai, from the “milk” of corn or masa, to be precise. Most recipes for Karachi/Bombay halva out there will tell you to use corn flour, or will name corn flour as though it’s interchangeable with corn starch–and that’s because in India what’s really corn starch is sold as “corn flour.” Using real corn flour will produce a cake and not the jiggly gelatinous nicuatole. So you can use commercially boxed and sold “corn flour” (which is really corn starch) or extract the starch yourself via the milk, though it takes much effort and time to do so.

I’ve no access to white corn, so home grown desi corn it had to be, then nixtamal, masa, masa harina, atole, and finally nicuatole–it took this long a breadcrumb trail to switch a wee light bulb on in my head because nicuatole made right is that close to the famous Bombay halva. The two aren’t interchangeable, though they come pretty darned close.

You’re guessing now where this is all going? What’s Pondicherry-style about this Bombay halva is that the key ingredient for nicuatole (masa dough or dough made from masa harina) brings a toasty unmissable, unmistakable flavor, and pavazhamalli flowers from the garden brings gorgeous golden tones to this old, favorite sweetmeat. Garden-to-table in every sense that is reviving and fun and satisfying.

All that said, here’s how.

It all started with the redheads crowding our garden this spring.

Corn from these girls was cooked and soaked in lime, pericaps washed off and the resulting wonderfully fragrant masa made into a dough like so. That’s the process called nixtamalisation.

STEP 1: If you’re lucky enough to have fresh masa, use a cup of it and mix with about 4 cups of water.

If you are working with masa harina instead of fresh masa, then you’re simply making a dough of it. Or, easier even, you’re mixing 1 cup masa harina with 4 cups of water and leaving that to soak overnight.

STEP 2: The next morning, drain the masa milk through a cheesecloth:

STEP 2.1: Now, if you get a milk that seems not much more than water — this can happen if you’re working with plain corn flour or store-bought masa harina — then you might want to add in 1/2 cup of corn starch at this stage. Whisk this into the milk until no lumps remain. If you go this route, the masa harina is providing mostly flavor and the corn starch is going to ensure the much-desired glutinous texture of the final halva. Set the milk aside for a while.

STEP 3: Now prepare the food color. That means stepping out into a garden which has a parijat tree! Collect as many flowers as you can. Many will recall mothers and grandmothers spreading old saris beneath the parijatam tree to make the next morning’s flower collection easier, and to keep the flowers cleaner. Parijatam is the only flower to be used in worship even though it is collected after falling to the ground. But saris help keep its purity better, I suppose!

If you’ve collected the flowers already, then all that remains is to pinch the stems off, but beware, removing stems from all those flowers takes up to an hour or more, depending on how fast you work! It’s a good time to catch up on phone calls with sisters or watch that movie you’ve been wanting to…

Once you’ve got about 1 cup or so of the parijat stems, immerse them for about 3-5 minutes in 1 cup of very hot (almost boiling) water. Do not cook the stems, just immerse them in the cup of water, and stir until the liquid turns orange-red. Drain. Don’t keep the stems in there any longer than 3-5 minutes or their bitterness will transfer to the halva later, too.

Of course you can simply use red food color, or skip the food coloring entirely, but where’s a halva going to look like a halva without these things?

STEP 4: Next, place 1 1/4 cups of sugar in a heavy bottomed pan, and pour in the colored liquid. Let this come to a bubbling boil, as in the 5th image below. Don’t worry about attaining any sort of string-consistency, just let it come to a nice boil and enjoy the views for a bit.

Note: I like my halvas on the less sweet side. If you prefer yours sweeter / closer to the commercial halwai tastes, then use 1 1/2 or a little more.

STEP 5: Before you move on to adding in the masa milk, make sure you have some chopped nuts and 5-6 cardamom pods crushed to a powder all ready. Once the halwai mixing begins, you’ll need all attention there and won’t have time to prep these later.

STEP 6: Also prepare halva moulds–either small individual dishes or a small baking tray will do. If you have moulds of any kind, those can be fun to use, too! Just grease whatever you’re using with a little ghee, sprinkle a few of the chopped nuts in each, and set aside.

STEP 7: Now reduce your flame to low, and gently pour in all the masa milk, mixing well with a wire whisk to prevent any lumping as the masa milk starts to heat and thicken — which it does very, very quickly.

Once all the milk is poured in, roll up your sleeves, put some music on, and continue mixing. Do not leave this mixture unattended! It will thicken and stick to the bottom of the pan very quickly and continuous mixing is the only way to keep that from happening.

STEP 8: The mixture will soon thicken into glassy-glossiness, very pretty just to watch. Eventually (about 1/2 hour or less), it will commence a mud-pot volcanic boil, and then start to seem like it’s pulling away from the sides of the pan. It should be already quite jiggly and gelatinous at this state. Now, start adding ghee, a scant teaspoon at a time, just enough to keep the mixture from sticking. You shouldn’t need more than about 5-6 teaspoons of ghee for this halva to produce what we call that signature halva thala-thala–no translation really except perhaps as wiggle-jiggle.

STEP 9: Nuts! Add the remaining chopped nuts to the halva now and mix well.

STEP 10: Turn off the flame, and carefully spoon the hot halva into each of the prepped moulds. Use your fingers or a spoon to push the halva down — tricky because the halva is jiggly and the moulds are greased, so things tend to slip-slide. But it happens with a little coaxing.

Set these aside to cool. Invert onto serving dishes and cut into shapes as you please or just serve as-is! Et voila! Garden-to-table, flower colored, and scented with the nuttiness of masa harina and the richness of ghee–a cross between Oaxacan nicuatole and Karachi/Bombay halva that could have happened only in this wild Pondicherry kitchen & now maybe in yours, too.