recipe boxes 19
[opening jingle] assalaamu alaikum and welcome to titli's busy kitchen with me titli nihaan. today i'm gonna cook something that's really very traditional but you don't often see it on restaurant menus. it's delicious, it's nutritious, it's called haleem and cooking haleem takes a lot of love and care. it's like... nurturing a child through it's early years. it's like... enough of the similes! get on with the cooking! so.. no packet mixes for me. here i've got a kilogram of beef, cut into big cubes. you could use lamb or chicken. there's 250 g of dried wheat which i soaked overnight and then drained.
if you can't get wheat, try barley and if you can't get wheat or barley, use a dal like split peas. here there's 50 g of yellow split peas which i've washed and soaked overnight and finally, a handful of red lentils that i've also soaked overnight. for spices, i've got 3 tablespoons of garlic and ginger paste, 2 tablespoons of hot chilli powder, a teaspoon of turmeric, 2 teaspoons each of garam masala and coriander powder, a teaspoon of cumin powder, a teaspoon of ground black pepper, a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of cloves and finally, a big pinch of curry leaves. i've heated 2 teaspoons of ghee in this very large pan and the first thing i'm gonna do is to brown the beef for 5 minutes.
there are 2 really useful tools for making haleem. one is this flat-bladed spatula, the other one i'll show you later. right. my meat is brown. i'm going to add in the spices and just fry this for 2 more minutes. it's looking very nice. i'll turn the heat down and add in my pulses. now that i've added all the dal, i'm gonna add some water. in fact, 2 litres of water so that i'll almost fill the pan.
i'll turn the heat up now and bring this to the boil. once it comes up to the boil, gonna turn the heat down and allow this to simmer gently for around 3 to 4 hours. i might need to top the water from time to time so i'll do that. after about 3 hours, the haleem has gone quite thick and some important changes start to happen. first of all, the skin starts to appear and then this is where your flat bladed spatula comes in really handy 'cos it starts to stick now to the bottom of the pan and you'll find that about every 15minutes, maybe even less, you have to scrape it off the bottom. this has been cooking now for about 4 hours and you can see it's really quite thick.
now, you have a choice. you could either put this into a food processor and process it very coarsely or you can use the other essential ingredient the haleem chamcha (haleem spoon). what this does is it mashes everything up in there and you can use a good strong potato masher as well if you like. so, down we go. we find all the lumps of meat and we squish them against the bottom of the pan. i love making haleem this way. gives me a great sense of satisfaction. you know, i've even seen recipes of haleem that say use quaker instant oats. oh, come on!
i mean, i'm all for shortcut but there is a limit. what i'm trying to do here is i'm trying to find bits of meat. you see, there's still a lump of meat there. when i find one, i take it down to the bottom of the pan and squish it really hard to break it up. i've been going at this for about half an hour now and i think i've pretty much got all the big lumps out and converted all the meat into its fibres. right. time to serve up! to serve, sprinkle on some coriander and fried onions and serve with fried onions, chopped chillies, fresh lime, juicy fresh ginger and chopped coriander. haleem should have the consistency of a porridge and it's a very filling dish.
i like to serve a small vegetable bhaji by the side of it. it freezes extremely well and i usually got a box or two of haleem in my freezer. join me next time in titli's busy kitchen with me titli nihaan. until next time... khuda hafiz. [closing jingle]
