Just as food brings us together as individuals, so it brings together cultures. My mum adored Chinese food, and cooked it well, so we ate a lot of that when I was growing up. One of my aunts is Fijian-Indian, and her dahl is my absolute definition of comfort food, as full of love as it is of spice. Some of my absolute favourite dishes are from Turkish and Lebanese cuisines, and one of the best things about travelling, for me, is trying new dishes.
But I had not ventured much into the area of different desserts until I realised I needed a Priya-specific biscuit. Some research and a lot of dithering later, I decided on this definitely not entirely authentic version of Nankhatai, a shortbread-like cookie popular in northern India and Pakistan. Some substitution was used, as I wanted to make sure most of us would have the ingredients in stock for it.
I admit I was a little wary about the sheer quantity of cardamom involved, as that stuff is strong (if glorious), so I started with a half batch of cookies.
Shouldn’t have. These are so ridiculously good and more-ish and delightful and (in my humble opinion) way better than regular shortbread. More, please.
- 120 g / ¾ cup + 1 Tbsp icing sugar
- 280 g / 10 oz ghee or salted butter at room temperature
- 320 g / 2 cups flour
- ⅛ tsp baking powder
- ¾ tsp baking soda
- 100 g / a little under ⅓ cup semolina
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 4 Tbsp ground almonds or pistachios (or a mix)
- Pistachios or almonds to decorate
Line two cookie sheets, and preheat oven to 180°C/350°F.
Beat icing sugar and butter/ghee until light and fluffy – about 10 minutes or so.
Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl and peer at the butter mix suspiciously, as it really won’t look much different than at the start.
Decide it must be 10 minutes, because you forgot to time it.
Add dry ingredients to butter mix and combine gently. It’ll be quite a stiff dough once it comes together.
Form into balls of roughly a couple of tablespoons each and press down a little to flatten. You can get a bit decorative on the top if you fancy, or just top with chopped nuts.
Bake until golden on top and gently browned at the edges, around 12 minutes or so.
Don’t bother to wait for them to cool. They’re amazing warm, too.