Pineapple kesari & Award time!

Kesari is a very common sweet in the south. In those dinasour days when arranged marriages were very common, like the one I had.  kesari was a staple sweet on the menu when a boy comes to see the girl and their family for the first time.

The belief was the first encounter should begin with sweet memories....if people were expecting beautiful ladies clad in a white angel like clothes to be singing, sorry doesn't happen that way!
Well, it did not happen that way for me though :((

If any one had better experiences please fell free to share!

Anyway enough of my blah.. blah.. Lets get tour kesari.

This is a straight forward kesari with pineapple in it. I guess you can make any fruit flavored kesari wtih mango, banana,strawberry etc...

What I used:

1/2 cup rawa or semolina
1/2 cup pineapple pureed with small chunks ( i used i cup of chopped pineapples to make this)
2 cups hot water water
Yellow food color or very little amount of kesari color. (hard to measure, eyeball till your desired color is obtained)
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup ghee or clarified butter + 2 tsp for roasting the rawa
1 tbsp broken cashew pieces
3- 4 green cardamom seeds powdered.

How I did it:

• In a pan  ( preferrably non stick) roast rawa till light brown or fragrant.
• Add 2 cups of water to the rawa and cook till the rawa is done well. The reason I used hot water is to prevent the rawa from forming clumps.
• Add the kesari color.
• Add the pureed pineapple mixture.
• Once the rawa is well cooked add the sugar and stir well.
• You may notice that the mix becomes thin, bit that's normal.
• Keep stirring or cooking for a few minutes.
• In a nother pan by the side aheat ghee and fry the cashews till golden.
• Add the ghee to the rawa and mix and cook till the kesari does not stick to the pan.
• With non stick pan, it's kinda hard to say, when it does not stick.
• The trick is take a small piece of kesari without burning your fingers and try to roll into a small ball. If it does not stick to your hands, it's done.
• Add cardamom powder and garnish with any nuts you want.

You'll feel a little tartness from the pineapple, but that's what is special about this kesari.

I am so happy and honored to receive this loving blogger award from satya.  This is my first award and i am on cloud 9! She is an excellent blogger and brings out dishes so innovatively! Thank you so much Satya!

I would like to share this with 3 bloggers who admire a lot! It was hard to choose 3 people as there are some excellent bloggers out there!

Mriganayani needs no introduction to bloggers out there. She is amazing and I lover her attention to details. i admire her patience to take step by step pics of evrything that she cooks. I can never do that bcoz when I start to cook, eberyone in my family need me for something or the other.

Ediblegarden has been my teacher about some steps in photography! Constantly used to visit her site before I started blogging! She has really simple and excellent recipes in her space.

Redchillies amazes me with her beautiful pictures and simple and elegant recipes. Again she was one bloggers who inspired me to start food blogging.

Thanks for all your support and encouragements!

BTW I took pics today with my i phone! How does it look??