Goan Tavsalli: no eggs, no flour Cucumber Coconut cake, monsoon special

Goan tavsalli, an eggless, flourless cucumber coconut cake, is a monsoon time treat. It's made with large cucumbers, or taushe, also known as Mangalore or Madras cucumbers. Tavsalli brings together cucumber, coconut, rawa and sugarcane jaggery. If you don’t get this cucumber where you live, you can substitute 6-7 of these regular cucumbers for the quantities in this recipe.

0:00 Goan tavsalli, an eggless, flourless cucumber coconut cake
1:00 Preparing ingredients for measuring
1:44 Ingredients for tavsalli
4:58 Roasting the semolina/rawa
6:58 Drying the cake mix
7:44 Preparing the cake tin with turmeric leaves
11:43 Baking the tavsalli
12:31 Slicing the tavsalli

Ingredients:
- 2 Madras cucumbers, or 6-7 regular cucumbers, grated
- 1½ cups sugarcane jaggery, grated
- 1½ cups fresh coocnut, grated
- 2 scant cups of semolina (rawa).
- 2 tablespoons ghee
- ½ cup cashew nuts
- ½ teaspoon salt
- a few turmeric leaves

Method:
-For the first step, carefully de-seed two Madras cucumbers. Use a spoon to ensure you remove all the seeds, as these larger Madras cucumbers have hard seeds. If you are using the regular cucumbers, you can skip this step if the seeds are soft enough.

-Then, peel and grate the cucumbers fine.

-Shave the jaggery.

- Mix the grated cucumber, coconut and jaggery together, and set aside while you roast the rawa, so that the jaggery begins melting into the cucumber juice.

- Roast the semolina in two very generous tablespoons of ghee, on a low flame, constantly stirring so that the rawa does not burn. Move the rawa constantly, pressing down to ensure that no lumps form. It takes five to seven minutes to roast the rawa. You should get an aroma of roasted rawa and it should change colour also.

- If you are baking you're tavsalli in an oven, this is the time to preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius, before the next step.

- Next, dry out the cucumber mixture in the same pan just till the jaggery melts completely. Add the half teaspoon of salt and the cashew nuts.

- While the jaggery is melting, prepare a baking dish, greasing it with a little bit of ghee.

- Next, line the dish with turmeric leaves. This step is optional. If you don't have turmeric leaves, skip this.

- Once the jaggery has melted, turn the flame down and add the roasted rawa. The rawa is going to absorb the liquid in our pan. Fold the rawa in carefully. Once the liquid has been absorbed by the semolina and the mass has become quite dry, the cake batter is ready to transfer to the baking dish.

- Layer some more turmeric leaves on top of the tavsalli. These will also help keep the cake moist. Bake in a preheated 200 degree oven for about 30 minutes

- Leave to cool, then slice and serve

- You can also steam this cake for 40 minutes, doing the knife test after about 30 minutes. You can use a handvo pan or a pressure cooker without the weight. I prefer to bake it in an oven because my eaters enjoy the crust which forms with oven baking

Hope you like this monsoon sweet with lots of love from my home to yours

Enjoy la vida Goa!

Music:
Sayuri Hayashi Egnell / Joy in the Little Things / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Megan Wofford/ Simplicity, Minor Emotions, Fresh Perspective, Stepping Stones / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com

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