Last night I made shahi turkha for the sweet course of our dinner. After one mouthful my friend Vishu said ‘this taste reminds me of my childhood. It tastes just like the shahi turkha our old cook used to make’, and then proceeded to unabashedly ‘hog’ down two heaping platefuls: he could not have given me a more gratifying compliment. I am not Indian and I did not spend my childhood in India but I have spent more than a decade researching the history and culture of Indian food. I have also been able to spend some time in Indian kitchens learning the technical aspects of Indian cookery although I am largely self-taught. It gave me great pleasure to hear that I had captured the taste of a childhood spent on the other side of the world in a completely different culture. This was a fair exchange as Vishu had earlier taken me to visit a gypsy village (gypsies are believed to have set out on their global wandering from India) and this brought back my childhood memories of reading Famous Five books where the Five often shared their adventures with gypsy children: happy times all round.
Shahi means royal and any dish carrying it as an adjective in its title will be a rich one. Shahi turkha is a pudding made of bread and I reckon it can lay claim to the title ‘king of bread puddings’. To make it bread is fried in ghee then dipped in sugar syrup; this is then layered with nuts and dried fruit. The remaining sugar syrup is infused with cream and poured over the bread slices. Traditionally this is then set aside for some time to allow the bread to soak up the sauce but as it winter in India and very cold at night (in north and central India) I baked mine in the oven instead.

I have made shahi turkha many times but I know little about it origins. It is a dish from the Indian Muslim cookery repertoire. I am not sure it would have been devised to use up stale bread, as bread puddings elsewhere are, as it is too luxurious to have been made from leftovers. I imagine that a cook or a halwai (confectioner) must have devised using sheermal, a sweet bun like bread popularly eaten by Muslims in India, but this is entirely speculation on my part. As I am unable to share anything more substantial about the history of the dish I will leave you with the recipe and encourage you to try it yourself.

Shahi Turkha

serves 6-8

Each time I make this dish I make it slightly differently. For the version I mention in this post I brushed the bread with ghee and toasted the pieces in the oven until they were golden. This reduced considerably the amount of ghee needed for the dish and I think I prefer it done this way. I have also replaced the cardamom pods with a few slithers of orange peel when oranges are in season and then served the pudding with fresh orange slices as an accompaniment. On another occasion I replaced the cream and milk with a can of evaporated milk and produced another fine version of this dish. At the end of the recipe I give alternative methods for serving as a hot or cold pudding. So familiarize yourself with the method and then make it your own.

Ingredients

8-10 slices white bread*

1 cup ghee

1 cup sugar

3 whole cardamom pods

¼ cup roasted almonds, sliced

 1/3 cup pistachio nuts, chopped

2 tbsp chopped dried fruit

1 cup cream

3/4 cup  milk

2 tbsp rosewater

Method

Remove crusts from the bread and cut each slice in half.

Heat ghee in a frying pan and fry bread, turning once till golden on both sides. Drain on kitchen paper and keep aside.

Put the sugar, cardamom pods and 1 cup cold water into a saucepan and cook over a medium high heat until sugar dissolves. Allow the syrup to cook uncovered on high heat for five minutes or until it has reduced and thickened slightly. Remove the pan from heat. Carefully dip each piece of the fried bread into syrup. Arrange bread slices in a shallow baking dish sprinkling the nuts and dried fruit in between the layers.

Pour the milk and the cream into the remaining syrup and cook over medium heat for about 3 minutes, stirring constantly until the syrup reduces and thickens slightly. Remove the cardamom pods and stir in the rosewater. Pour cream mixture over bread and bake in the oven at 180°c until the bread has absorbed the cream and is golden on the top. Serve hot

. Alternatively you can refrigerate the pudding until the bread has absorbed the cream mixture and is firm to the touch. Serve chilled cut into squares. *I used soft slightly sweet buns to make my recent childhood memory inducing batch of shahi turkha.

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