Mangoes and cream sounds as classic a food pairing as peas and carrots, peanut butter and jelly, or spaghetti and meatballs to my ears. This combination lends itself to so many variations, each with its own distinctive character.
The recipe and variations that follow are based on malai aam, a classic Indian dessert of mangoes and cream topped with nuts. It traditionally uses rabadi – milk slowly simmered until reduced to one-fourth its original volume. Sweetened and served as a creamy sauce, rabadi is essential in Indian desserts such as the labor-intensive ras malai, cheese dumplings served with a pistachio cream sauce.
Reading about ras malai in Julie Sahni’s excellent cookbook Classic Indian Cooking, I immediately had a strong urge to try it. Making it myself was not an option because it doesn’t make sense to cook something I’ve never had before. There’s also that little problem with the recipe spanning six pages long, making even the most complex sauces and gravies in the book seem like child’s play.
I consider myself lucky that I live in a city with a thriving Indian community and have access to sweets as boldly flavored as their savory counterparts in curries and dals. A walk down Devon Avenue to hunt for unfamiliar sweets never fails to disappoint — I just point at random things not caring what it is knowing full well that I’ll be surprised and pleased at the same time.
