Chholar Dal'er Halwa—a fabulous Bengali dessert with dal and coconut milk

Halwa is a style of dessert where a grain, seed, vegetable, or fruit is cooked along with sugar and ghee until almost all of the water evaporates and the dish takes on a glossy appearance and a fudgy texture. Halwa is cooked and enjoyed everywhere from Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa to Asia. What is halva made from? If it’s edible, chances are someone somewhere has tried to turn it into halwa at some point.

In this episode @SalmaTheChef shows us her family’s recipe of chholar dal’er halwa, that is halwa made from split Bengal gram (“chana dal” in some South Asian languages). As Salma mentioned, chaal’er ruti and chhola’r dal’er halwa are staples in Bengali Muslim households on Shab-e-Barat—around early spring. She learnt this recipe from her mother-in-law. What makes this halva special is that instead of cow milk, it uses coconut milk. That small change takes this already fabulous dish to an elevated decadence.

Like most traditional halvas, this recipe is laborious because it needs constant stirring and vigilance, but the end result is something quite exquisite. Even if you are someone who would never take on so much work for one dish, we think it is a privilege to learn about its intricacies from an expert like Salma.
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📝 FULL WRITTEN RECIPE WITH INGREDIENT LIST
www.bongeats.com/recipe/chholar-daler-halwa
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🙌🏽 Salma’s final recipe in this series will posted for Patrons of our membership community, Bong Eats Adda: https://www.bongeats.com/community/join

🎵 Music: “Barir pashe arshi nagar” originally composed by Lalon Fakir in the 1800s.
– Re-arranged and recorded for Bong Eats by
– Diptanshu Roy @dolinman (mandolin)
– @TarishiMukherjee (vocals)
– Abhijit Kundu (guitar)
– Nilesh Banerjee (drums)