Bottle gourd Halwa | Sorakai Halwa (Warm Dessert) Recipe

Bottle Gourd contains many vitamins and minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, Vitamin A, C and folate. 

One can find this vegetable cooked many different ways in India. It's either added to dhal or a yogurt based curry. Specially during festivals southindian families prefer consuming bottle gourd and scientifically it was proven that bottle gourd helps in weight loss. 

I like bottle gourd halwa, since its a foolproof recipe and can be prepared under 10 minutes. This dessert must be consumed warm.

Ingredients:
300 Grams Bottle Gourd
200 Grams Khova or Milk powder
3 Pods Cardamom
2 Cloves
1/2 Cup Sugar (we can also use organic raw sugar/jaggery)
Chopped Nuts (10 Cashews, Almonds, pistachios and melon seeds)
3+2 Tbsp Ghee
Green food color a pinch or 10 Saffron Strands

Method:

• Heat a fry pan dry roast the cardamom and cloves for a minute. Crush the dry roasted spices using a mortar and pestle prepare a coarse powder and reserve. we can use the cardamom husk/skin to flavor chai or coffee. 
• Wash and peel the vegetable. Tender bottle gourd has a very thin skin, since its slippery and cannot be grated I remove the skin.
• Do not use a cheese grater to grate the vegetable for this blog and video I planned to use a cheese grater and ended up with a mushy vegetable. Please use a large eye grater and grate the vegetable.
• Heat a wok on medium flame add 3 tbsp ghee. Once the ghee is hot transfer the vegetable to the pan and fry for a minute.
• Add the sugar and khova to the vegetable stir and place on low flame.
• There is so much moisture in the vegetable it will cook on its own we need not add any moisture.
• In 5 minutes the vegetable would have released enough moisture keep stirring constantly. 

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• Once the sugar and khova has melted and the vegetable has cooked half way through place on high flame allowing the moisture to evaporate completely.
• Once the moisture has evaporated add a pinch of food color along with the powdered spices mix well till all ingredients have combined.
• Once all the ingredients have combined well it should start forming a ball consistency meaning all ingredients should not stick to the pan it should leave the sides of the pan at this point remove from heat and reserve.
• Heat a fry pan again with 2 tbsp ghee on medium flame fry the nuts till it turns light golden brown in color top the halwa with fried nuts serve hot...Enjoy :)

Tips: 
Use a nonstick pan or wok to prepare this halwa.
Purchase tender bottle gourd which weighs not more than 300 to 450 grams for this recipe.
Always taste a tiny bit of vegetable before preparing any dish. normally the bottle gourd does not have any taste if the vegetable is bitter discard its of no use.
Its also advisable to drink coffee or tea with the dessert since it will help in digestion. 
If one cannot find khova we can use milk powder.