ShahiTukda with Brown Bread
ShahiTukda with Brown Bread
Ingredients
Brown Bread – 5-6 slices
Vanilla custard powder – 1 -1/2 tbsp
Sugar – 200 g
Milk – 250 g
Butter – for coating the bread
Raisins – for decoration
Saffron – a pinch
Method:
There are two ways to make this putting. Take the bread slices and remove the brown crust. Now you may either deep fry or just toast the bread if you are calorie conscious. In case you decide to toast it, spread some butter on it first.
Take a flat dish that is ovenproof. Grease it with some oil and keep it aside.
Take the toasts and cut them in half to have two triangles. Place these in the tray with a gentle overlap on each.
Take a pan and heat milk in it. Meanwhile, place the custard powder in a cup and add a spoonful of cold milk to it and make a paste. Add this paste to the hot milk and let it simmer. Continue stirring till the milk thickens. Turn off the gas. Add sugar to this mixture and stir well to dissolve it.
Meanwhile add some milk to the saffron strands and let them dissolve.
Now pour the custard mixture on the toast that you have placed in the dish. Add the dissolved saffron strands too.
Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees. Place the dish in it and heat for 5 to 10 min till you see a light brown coating on top. Take the dish out and sprinkle some raisins on it.
Serve it hot.
Tip: You may sprinkle some sugar on this custard before you place it in the oven. The sugar will caramelize and give a unique color and flavor to the dish.
The real shahitukda is made with thickened milk. The recipe above is a quick alternative. In order to make authentic shahitukda, you can simmer milk on gas till it thickens and reduces to half at least. The bread has to be white and deep fried in desi ghee. This is a really rich dish. In order to make it lighter and healthier, brown bread is being used that is not fried but toasted.
While raisins are an integral part of its garnish, you can add as many dry fruits as you want. This would include sliced and peeled almonds, cashews, pistachios and so on. You may even sprinkle some grated fresh coconut on top of this dish.
Though this dish is ideally served hot, you may even serve it cold. But in that case, make sure that the bread is not fried in ghee or else the ghee will freeze and make it unpalatable.
In case you are toasting bread and using custard, you may add a lot of fresh fruits rather than dry fruits as garnish. This would include apples, mango, cherry, strawberry, black currant, grapes, pineapple and any other fruit of your choice. In this case, you may even add some whipped cream on top.