This is a sweet made out of a vegetable, and not as a novelty. Parwal — pointed gourd, the green striped thing that turns up in every summer sabzi across the eastern plain — is scraped, slit down one side, hollowed of its seeds, blanched, and then simmered in sugar syrup until the flesh turns translucent and gives up being a vegetable altogether. It is stuffed with sweetened khoya, closed, and finished with pistachio and silver leaf, so what arrives looks like a small green boat and eats like a barfi with a faint grassy edge underneath. It belongs to Banaras and to Bihar, it appears in the sweet-shop trays in early summer when parwal is cheap, and it does not travel: outside the region almost nobody has heard of it, and inside it, nobody thinks it is strange.
INGREDIENTS
- 12 small parwal (pointed gourd)
- 300 g sugar
- 400 ml water
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 200 g khoya (mawa, crumbled)
- 60 g caster sugar (for the filling)
- ½ tsp ground green cardamom
- 2 tbsp chopped pistachios (plus more to finish)
- 1 tbsp chopped almonds
- edible silver leaf (vark, to finish)
METHOD
- Scrape the ridged skin off the parwal lightly with a knife, leaving them green.
- Slit each one down one side without cutting through, and scoop out all the seeds and pith with a small spoon.
- Blanch them in boiling water for four minutes, then drain.
- Boil the sugar and water with the lemon juice for five minutes to a thin syrup.
- Slide in the parwal and simmer very gently for 25 minutes, until the flesh turns translucent and takes on the syrup.
- Take off the heat and leave them to cool completely in the syrup, ideally for a few hours.
- Dry-fry the khoya for five minutes until it smells nutty. Cool, then mix with the caster sugar, cardamom, pistachios and almonds.
- Lift the parwal from the syrup and drain them well, patting the insides dry.
- Stuff each one generously with the khoya filling and press the slit closed.
- Top with chopped pistachio and a torn piece of silver leaf. Chill an hour before serving.
