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.