Visheti
Sugar-glazed fried dough
Visheti: Swahili Eid sweets of fried cardamom dough in a crackly white sugar glaze
Tins of visheti appear in every Swahili home in Zanzibar and Mombasa in the days before Eid, ready for the visitors who drop by after prayers. They are small diamond or finger-shaped pieces of cardamom-and-coconut dough, fried until crisp and then tossed in boiling syrup until it dries to a crackly white shell; inside they stay crunchy with a faint softness at the heart. Kids love them, and they keep for a week in an airtight tin, so they make a good gift. The tricky bit is the glaze: if you stop stirring too early it stays sticky, and too late it turns to lumps of sugar. This version uses butter and milk powder, so it is vegetarian but not vegan. Chef's tip: keep stirring the visheti in the syrup off the heat until the pan suddenly looks cloudy and dry; that is the moment the coating sets.
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 35 min
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Serves
- 8
- Per serving
- 380 kcal
Ingredients
For the dough
- 10 ½ oz plain flour
- 2 tbsp milk powder
- 1 tsp ground cardamom
- 2 tbsp sugar
- ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 ¾ oz butter or gheemelted
- ¾ cup coconut milkabout; plus a splash more if needed
- 4 ¼ cups vegetable oilfor deep frying
For the glaze
- 7 oz sugar
- 4 cardamom podslightly crushed
Tick what you have; the rest goes in the basket.
Method
0/8 doneStep 1: Mix 10 ½ oz plain flour, 2 tbsp milk powder, 1 tsp ground cardamom, 2 tbsp sugar, ½ tsp baking powder and 1 pinch salt in a bowl. Pour in 1 ¾ oz butter or ghee and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like damp sand.
Step 2: Add ¾ cup coconut milk a little at a time and bring it together into a firm, smooth dough that doesn't stick to your hands. It should be stiffer than chapati dough. Cover and rest for 15 minutes.
15 minStep 3: Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to 7–8 mm thick. Cut it into strips 1.5 cm wide, then across into small diamonds or fingers about 3 cm long.
Step 4: Heat 4 ¼ cups vegetable oil in a deep pan to 350°F, or until a scrap of dough rises steadily with gentle bubbles. Fry the visheti in batches, stirring, until pale golden and crisp all over.
15 minStep 5: Lift out with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Let them cool for a few minutes.
Step 6: Put 7 oz sugar, 4 cardamom pods and 80 ml water in a wide, clean pan over a medium heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then boil without stirring until the syrup is thick and large bubbles form; a drop pulled between finger and thumb (once cooled) should form a thread.
6 minStep 7: Take the pan off the heat, tip in all the visheti and stir constantly with a wooden spoon. After a minute or two the syrup turns cloudy and then dries to a white crust on each piece; keep stirring until they separate.
3 minStep 8: Spread out on a tray to cool completely, pick out the cardamom pods, and store in an airtight tin.
KrazyBadal
Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to cook it.
Rate this recipe
Sign in to rate and review this recipe.
You might also like
Kartoshka cakeCocoa and cake crumb truffles
Soviet cafés and school canteens sold these knobbly brown 'potatoes' for a few kopecks, and they began as a thrifty way to use up sponge and biscuit trimmings at the bakery. Crumbs are bound with butter and sweetened condensed milk, flavoured with cocoa and vanilla, shaped into little potatoes, rolled in cocoa and finished with two dabs of pale butter cream for the sprouts. They are fudgy and dense like a brownie truffle, need no oven, and children love making them. Traditional bakers added a spoonful of rum, an optional extra for adult batches only; this version is alcohol-free with vanilla. The usual slip is coarse crumbs, which make the potatoes crack, so blitz them as fine as sand. Chef's tip: chill the shaped potatoes for at least 20 minutes so they hold their shape and slice cleanly.
Russian
Khao niao mamuangMango sticky rice
Khao niao mamuang is what Bangkok queues for in April and May, when nam dok mai and ok rong mangoes flood the markets at Pak Khlong Talat and street carts sell little foam boxes of it all afternoon. Steamed glutinous rice is soaked in warm, lightly salted sweet coconut milk until every grain turns glossy and plump, then served beside slices of ripe mango with a spoonful of thick salted coconut cream and a scatter of crisp yellow mung beans. The common mistake is boiling the rice like ordinary rice: glutinous rice must be soaked and then steamed, or it collapses into paste. Chef's tip: pour the coconut sauce over the rice while both are hot and cover the bowl for 15 minutes; hot rice drinks the sauce in, cold rice leaves it sitting on top.
Thai
Undu walaluFried urad dal rings in treacle
Walalu means bangles, and these dark, sticky rings of fried urad dal soaked in kithul treacle are a sweet that Sinhala families bring out for Avurudu and for special almsgivings, often made in large batches by an aunt known for her steady hand. A thick, fluffy paste of ground black gram is piped into loops and fried until crisp, then plunged straight into warm treacle, so the rings stay crunchy on the outside while drinking up the syrup. They taste a little like a darker, smokier jalebi, with a toffee finish from the palm treacle. Watery batter is what ruins them; it spreads into flat blobs, so grind the soaked dal with as little water as possible and beat it until light. This recipe uses no asafoetida, so it is naturally gluten free. Chef's tip: pipe the rings onto small squares of baking paper and lower them into the oil paper and all; the paper peels away in seconds.
Sri Lankan