Diwali is the great festival of lights. For Hindus, it celebrates Lord Rama vanquishing the demon Ravana, but it’s also a Sikh and Jain festival. For all, it’s a chance to celebrate the triumph of good over evil, to be enjoyed with bright colours, lanterns, fireworks, as well as lots of delicious food.
This year, it happens to fall on 5 November, so as well as firework displays for Guy Fawkes’ night, cities across the UK will be celebrating Diwali, and nowhere more so than the great Indian population centres of Leicester and London. Leicester’s celebrations are legendary in scale and exuberance, while London is laying on a massive party in Trafalgar Square. So what will we get to eat?
Sweets. Oodles of sweets. Although UK popular culture has embraced main dishes from the Indian subcontinent, the world of sweets is a closed book. Most of us have tried kulfi, the delectable ice-cream, but India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have such an extraordinarily rich (rich being the right word) tradition of sweet-making, we’re really missing a trick here.
To make sure I’m fully prepared in advance to enjoy Diwali treats, I picked up a generous box of traditional delicacies and got stuck in.
Diwali in Leicester and London: Gulab jamun
Picture a nugget of particularly good, dense doughnut. Now dunk said doughnut in sugar and cardamom syrup. Very simple, moist and utterly delicious. The dough is made from milk or cream and flour, and the frying fat is (whisper it), ghee. If you haven’t been introduced, this is clarified butter. The gulab jamun – a very common Diwali sweet – is naughty but oh-so-nice, though so extremely sweet I’d recommend eating it with coffee.
Diwali in Leicester and London: Halwa
Halwa is a dish of a thousand variations. Quite apart from the different flours used, nuts, fruit and even carrot can be added to make this the most versatile of Indian sweets. The habshi halwa I tried uses a base of milk, sugar and ghee, with cashew nuts, almonds, pistachios and cardamom. The set paste is then cut into squares.
This is my favourite of the sweets. It has a dark sugar taste, like Demerara, with the warming autumnal spice of cardamom. The texture is more squodgy than chewy, making consuming huge quantities of it dangerously easy. My friend from Delhi swears by the carrot halwa. That’s next on my to-do list, sigh! I’m a martyr to this column…
Diwali in Leicester and London: Ladoo
Ladoos are real celebration food, given as presents on special occasions. When I was in Udaipur on the birthday of the Hindu god Ganesh, colourful street celebrations included – to my delight – a stranger giving some of these to my friend and me. Delicious.
The distinctive feature is the shape – spheres of various flour, fat and sugar combinations. This particular version consisted of large spherical grains, which on contact crumbled throughout the mouth. This is a lighter sweet, honeyish and delicately flavoured.
Diwali in Leicester and London: Barfi
Barfi is made from sugar and ‘khoya’, a kind of thickened milk. This results in a crumbly texture like fudge but more floury, that melts in the mouth in a mellow, sweetly-sour mess like a sandcastle when the tide comes in. Almonds, and aromatic spices can be added to the mix. With its distinct texture and flavour, it’s one of the lighter treats. You could almost convince yourself it’s healthy (it’s not).
Diwali in Leicester and London: Jalebi
This piped dough of plain, chickpea and lentil flour forms pretty shapes when it’s deep-fried. As it’s then dunked in sugar syrup, it’s not the most slimline of snacks, though oddly in India it’s strictly considered a breakfast, or morning food. In Pakistan, it’s even a headache cure, when added to hot milk.
I was once given jalebi in a bowl of milk for breakfast by my hostel’s chef in Jodhpur, who insisted on getting up early to secure the necessaries. This is a sweet that inspires great enthusiasm! Great fun to eat (crunch, ooze, and a funny shape!), it is sure to be a hit with children.
So go on, get into the Diwali spirit and scoff some sweets. Happy Diwali, everyone!
