4 recipes that use edible silver leaf, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Daulat ki chaat, takes 40 minutes. It is most often cooked with pistachios, cardamom and ghee.
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Madhureem are elegant festive sweets: a smooth, green pistachio coating cooked in syrup wraps a filling of roasted mawa (khoya) and chopped nuts in saffron and cardamom syrup. Each is pressed and topped with edible silver leaf (varakh). Makes 15–20 — a beautiful sweet for weddings and Diwali.
Daulat ki chaat appears in the lanes of Chandni Chowk only in the coldest months, from about November to February. Vendors whisk milk and cream through the night and leave it out under the winter dew, then skim off a foam so light it disappears on your tongue, topped with saffron, khoya, sugar and pistachios. It's sold before the sun gets high, because warmth destroys it. A home kitchen can't recreate a Delhi winter night, so this version uses very cold milk and cream whipped to a loose foam and layered with saffron. It comes close: airy, cool, faintly sweet. Chef's tip: chill everything, bowl and whisk included, for at least 4 hours; the colder the milk, the more stable the foam.
Shahi tukda, the 'royal piece', comes from the Mughal kitchens of Old Delhi, and you'll still find trays of it around Jama Masjid during Ramzan, eaten after the evening meal, and at Eid feasts. Thick slices of bread are fried in ghee until crisp and golden, dipped briefly in cardamom and saffron syrup, then covered with rabri, milk slowly reduced until thick and full of creamy flakes. The bread stays crisp at the edges and soft in the middle. It's rich, so small pieces go a long way. Chef's tip: start the rabri first and let it simmer while you fry the bread; it takes the longest and needs only an occasional stir.
During the monsoon festival of Teej and through Raksha Bandhan, Jaipur's sweet shops stack golden, honeycomb discs of ghevar in their windows. The batter is little more than flour, chilled ghee and ice-cold water, poured into hot ghee in thin streams so it foams into a lacy round. It is then soaked in syrup and finished with rabri, sliced pistachios and a pinch of saffron. Married daughters traditionally receive it from their mothers' homes during Teej. The most common mistake is batter that is too warm or too thick; it fries into a heavy pancake instead of a web. Chef's tip: whisk the ghee with ice cubes until it is white and fluffy before adding flour, and keep the batter bowl in a tray of ice water while frying. A narrow, deep pan, or a metal ring set in a saucepan, gives the sides that help the batter build up.
