Celebrating British Summer with Bengali Fol-Ahar....

And so the Olympic 2012 finally began....living in London we all have been part of the preparations, the tube upgrades, the roads being poshed up, opening up of Westfield Stratford City and in the last week the dire warnings not to use public transport during the games. Finally Danny Boyle's extravaganza was unleashed, the Queen parachuted, a host of Mary Poppins floated down, Mr Beans did his usual antics and David Beckham looked like the latest James Bond, forging of the Olympic rings and that awesome cauldron.

We were in a friend's house from whose balcony the Olympic stadium can be seen. We all had our eyes glued to the television screen, when Red Arrows appeared in the sky, streaking it with red, blue and white smoke. My husband casually lifted his head up and the Arrows were directly flying past our friend's balcony. We all tumbled out to the balcony. From then on we watched the ceremony half and half, sometimes on the television screen and sometimes from the balcony. It was a fun evening with friends and good food. Some photographs that I wanted to share with you.

Olympic Torch on Saturday ie. 21.07.2012 on Dalston Kingsland Road, London

Red Arrows suddenly appearing on our slice of the sky...

Olympic Stadium, all ready and lighted for the ceremonies to begin...

The fireworks....

The concluding fireworks....

The week leading up to the Olympic games was a hot and sunny week. Summer had finally arrived in the UK. It was time for celebrations--- picnics, BBQs, walking along the Thames and watching the sun slowly dip down the horizon. Most days when the sun is out and shinning I do not feel like cooking. So I fall back on easy to cook assemble dishes. 

For this month's World On A Plate the theme was fruit dessert. I decided to make on of my favourite fruit dishes of all time. Remember a few weeks back I was telling you about hot Indian summers? Oh well in such heat one hardly feels like cooking or eating. One of the easy things we eat a lot is a yogurt, mango and flaked rice dessert of sorts, which we call Fol-Ahar (fol in Bengali means fruit and ahar means to eat, so put together it means eating fruits). This is eaten at any time of the day. It is easy to assemble and the yogurt helps in cooling down the body. I made it for breakfast over the weekend and we ate it in our little garden, savouring the sunshine.

Please refer to the recipe card for the ingredients and the assembling steps. This quantity serves two. This can also be made with condensed milk which we call kheer.

Now a pictorial assembly guide. In this one I did not add bananas, because my husband absolutely refuses to have anything with bananas. But you can add ripe bananas, it adds to the taste.

So in a jiffy your Fol-Ahar gets ready. Chill it for a little while and enjoy!

*****