Gulab Jamun

I have been experimenting with my Indian cooking. I try and test it out on my Indian friends and ask for their honest opinion. Would it be laughed at or could I serve this up to guests?

One thing I seem to have down pat now is Gulab Jamun. These are also known as sweet meats or syrup balls. My kids love them (us too). The first time I made them I used a very authentic Indian cook book. I got my ingredients ready. The first thing it said to do was to boil down 2 litres of milk until it had evaporated away to a sticky dough like consistency (easy you say) Well, after 1.5 hours of standing and stirring the milk I was ready to call it quits. Who in their right mind has this amount of time to spend standing and stirring while your back and neck ache with fatigue. The end product was pretty dismal anyway. I looked for another recipe online and found, much to my embarrassment, that most people use milk power. It now takes half an hour to whip up a batch of syrup dripping, yummy Gulab Jamun.

My curries are getting better and the kids pallets seem to be adjusting slowly to the different spices. I still need to work on chapattis though. The last lot I made looked the shape of various continents and had the consistency of cardboard. We ended up using them as pizza bases the next day. I don't know how people get them into that perfect round shape. Maybe I am just too impatient, I know the theory of how to do it but in real life it is very time consuming. Practice, practice, practice.

The official stuff begins

We have decided to try and open a branch office of our business in India. There is a two fold outcome from doing this.

1. It could get us an employment visa for our entry into India
2. Will provide job opportunities for nationals of India

Our company is in the IT sector which is an area that Bangalore is exploding with and an area that needs technicians etc. We don't want to have a branch office just for the sake of having a branch office. If we can truly help provide job opportunities and train people in IT then eventually we can see us being in a more management roll and not so hands on thus freeing up our time for other things. I like the slogan that Business for millennium development have:
" Improve business, reduce poverty "

The first step towards setting up a branch office is to get permission for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In order for us to get this process going we need to get our current business audited. I am taking in our business records tomorrow to our accountant to get our end of the financial year records completed and then they are going to pass it on to the auditors.

I feel like this is the first official step towards India. Once we get permission from the RBI then we can look at getting the branch office registered. We are taking one step at a time and learning as we go. I am not sure what time frame we will be looking at as I have heard various reports of it taking a few weeks to nine months. ( I could have another baby in that time!)