Kharna is the second day of Chhath and the hardest hinge in it. The fasting woman goes the whole day without eating, and then at sunset, after the offering, she is given rasiao β rice cooked slowly into milk and sweetened not with sugar but with gur, the raw cane jaggery that comes off the winter presses β and a roti fried in ghee. She eats, the household eats after her as prasad, and from that moment the thirty-six-hour fast without food or water begins. Jaggery is the whole character of the dish. It goes in off the heat, because boiling milk and jaggery together will split the pot, and it turns the kheer a deep fawn-brown that no sugar version ever reaches. Every other kheer in this arc is a sweet at the end of a meal. This one is a meal, eaten once, at a particular hour, before a long night.
INGREDIENTS
- 100 g short-grain white rice (rinsed)
- 1.2 litres whole milk
- 150 g block jaggery (gur, grated)
- 4 green cardamom pods (seeds crushed)
- 2 tbsp ghee (for the kheer)
- a handful of cashews and raisins
- 200 g wholemeal wheat flour (atta)
- ΒΌ tsp salt
- water (to knead)
- 4 tbsp ghee (for the roti)
METHOD
- Soak the rinsed rice for 20 minutes, then drain.
- Bring the milk to a boil in a heavy pan, then lower the heat.
- Add the rice and simmer very gently for 40 minutes, stirring often and scraping the base, until the grains have broken down and the milk has thickened and turned faintly beige.
- Fry the cashews and raisins in the 2 tbsp of ghee until golden and stir them in with the crushed cardamom.
- Take the pan off the heat and let it stand for five minutes so it stops steaming.
- Now stir in the grated jaggery until it dissolves completely. Do not return it to the heat.
- For the roti, knead the flour with the salt and water into a soft dough and rest it 15 minutes.
- Divide into eight, roll each into a thin round, and cook on a hot tawa for a minute a side.
- Spoon ghee generously over each roti while it is still on the pan so it soaks in and the edges crisp.
- Serve the rasiao warm with the ghee roti alongside.
