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Krishna

It’s a pudding you can have cold or room temperature. I associate it with birthdays and temples. Different families around Calcutta will make this according to their tradition. When my mom was a child she experienced a famine, a man-made famine. And years later, when she and my dad were quite poor, they went through post-war Germany so resources were slim then and they had slim wallets. It was hard for them to eat for a year. So then they came to New York (the Bronx) and my dad got a job. And so she started making puddings with all the fatty materials she could find - condensed milk, half and half, really good whole milk - so growing up in the mornings if it was one of our birthdays, my mom would be in the kitchen cooking up this pudding as a birthday dish. Then one year when I was in my 20’s, it was my mother’s birthday. My mother’s sister was visiting from India, and she was making pudding in the kitchen. I realized that this is something my mom had done for all of us, but here was her sister making for her sister. And that’s when I learned I needed to make this dish for my sisters, cousins and my women friends.