With love, kheer and devotion for my family

When I first came to Mumbai to study, it was an uphill task to manage a plethora of projects and grinding presentations, and to still make your presence felt in a time of Orkut's increasing popularity.

Coming from a family who never ate out, it was quite difficult to adjust to a fast-paced life. To remind myself of my roots, I would try to cook and eat sheydo dal (boiled daal), bhat (rice), and aloo bhaja (finger fries) which reminded me of my mother's food. Five years later, I talk — and eat — more green and yellow zucchini, lettuce, scrambled eggs with ham, clear soups, Caesar salad with grated cheese, ravioli and much else.

So when I visited friends in Ambarnath, a distant suburb where I have spent the best part of my life, I offered to cook a new dish for my cousin. I had planned to make Caesar salad in an Australian style, and towards this had sourced special sauces from a visiting friend. I even left office early to buy vegetables.

Having Googled the recipe, I took a printout and read it repeatedly; all the way from office to Ambarnath to make sure nothing goes wrong.

But all my elaborate plans to treat my cousin to a new kind of salad went for a toss when my cousin dropped the bomb — he announced that he would eat whatever I cooked, but it should have a ‘Bangaliyana’ touch to it.

To be very honest, apart from boiling water in my kettle and pouring it in the Maggi cuppa, or boiling corn and dressing it up with salt and pepper, I hadn't really cooked anything in the last three years.

So cooking something traditional and impressing people who belong to the land of food connoisseurs is like asking a layman to duplicate Michaelangelo's work. But the Bong in me never gives up, so I offered to make the easiest yet tricky dessert on our menu card, payesh — otherwise known as kheer.

The best part about it is the ingredients, which are just three — Basmati rice, milk and sugar. Yet this dessert can go horribly wrong if it is not made with care.

The ingredients are as follows:
 500ml milk
 50gms Basmati rice
 100gm to 115gms sugar (depending upon your sweet tooth)
 Almonds, kaju and raisins (two to three each)

Clean and wash the rice with normal water before pouring it in the boiled milk. Pour the milk in a container and heat it, when it starts boiling pour the washed rice in it.

When the rice starts boiling, pour sugar in it and keep stirring. The rice should not stick to the container as it would lead to disastrous results. Keep stirring and always remember to keep the temperature low.

When the entire mixture starts looking thick, take it out. Put sliced kaju kishmish and badam in it, and for those who like their desserts served cold it can be refrigerated for half an hour. To add that extra ethnicity, sugar can be replaced with equal amount of jhola gud, which is found in Kolkata and some Bengali grocery shops in Dadar, Nerul and Thane.