There are loads of different ways of making this Indian sweet, but as usual, I'm going to present what I think is the easiest and laziest way of doing it. I've also opted for a version without milk, which makes it easier to make it a vegan recipe.
We use cardamoms in this recipe. They go well with carrots (see also rice pudding with carrots and cardamom) and, as they benefit the digestive process, make a good addition to an after dinner sweet.
Cardamoms are a spice that I don't use much of. I occasionally throw one or two into the mix in Indian recipes and I sometimes like to add a few whole pods to steaming rice, but I'm still using a pile I brought from Kerela in south India about seven years ago. They still taste fresh, too. I did buy rather a lot. I got them in Kumily, a village on the crest of the Western Ghats mountain range which exists in large part because of the spices grown in the area. The town is full of spice merchants and you can watch the spices being sorted and weighed as the farmers bring them into town from the countryside. The town is full of spicy aromas. In the immediate vicinity you can take short walks into the forest and see nutmeg and cinnamon trees with pepper vines spiraling up their trunks. All the different peppercorns come from the same plant - black, red, green and white. They are harvested at different stages of ripeness and processed in various ways. The cardamoms grow in the shade beneath the trees, and they all fit together beautifully to make a spice garden. The cardamom plants are rich green with lush, shiny leaves. They reminded me a little of cheese plants (you see those growing in the forest too; they grow wild, climbing up into the canopy with huge leaves - much bigger than the houseplants). The cardamom pods grow right at the base of the plant on a little stalk. It's easy to overlook them and the first few times I walked among them, I thought maybe it was the wrong season. One morning, however, I was hiking through a shola (a small wood in a valley) when I met a man who knew all about the different spices and he showed me how the cardamoms grow.
I left Kumily with a rucksack twice heavier than when I arrived. I was weighed down with nutmegs, mace, cardamoms, black pepper and cinnamon bark. But it was worth it. I'm still using the cardamoms, mace and cinnamon from that trip and they still taste strong and fresh.
This recipe should be enough for four people. It's easy to scale up if you want to make more.
Ingredients
500g carrots
1 cup of water
A half cup of sugar
A small handful of sultanas
A small handful of cashew nuts (broken up)
1 - 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine
4 or 5 cardamoms (crushed with the husks discarded) or a third of a teaspoon of powder
Peel and grate the carrots and put them in a pan with the water. SImmer for about 20 minutes with the pan partially covered, then add the other ingredients. Turn the heat up a little and cook for another 10 minutes or so, stirring constantly. The mixture should become sticky and begin to clump together when it is ready.
The halva can be served warm or cold. Spoon it into individual dishes or, if you want to save it until it's cold, you can spread it on a greased plate and cut it into slices later. You could also try putting small amounts into paper cup-cake cases - nice for a buffet spread.