Gheeya ki Lauj

Gheeya ki lauj is a North Indian sweet made by cooking bottle gourd down with milk until sweet and thick, then setting it into a shape that can be cut into pieces. It is also known by names such as lauki ki lauj and lauki ki barfi. Its cross-section, which ranges from white to pale green, keeps fine strands of grated flesh, and the richness of the milk overlaps with the soft texture of the vegetable.

Bottle gourd (Miansari66 / Wikimedia Commons, CC0). The downscaled version from the source is used, with no changes to the content after retrieval.

Keeping the gourd coarsely grated

Here, gheeya and lauki are names that refer to bottle gourd. The gourd is peeled, grated, and cooked with milk. Some home cooks grate it somewhat coarsely so that strands of the flesh remain, instead of grating it finely and letting it dissolve completely.

Some cooks reduce the milk a little before adding flesh that has been lightly sautéed in ghee, and others start cooking the flesh and milk together from the beginning. With either method, the moisture from the vegetable and the milk is reduced, and the mixture is cooked down until it is thick enough to hold its shape once it cools.

When to move it from the pan to the tray

Once the milk and flesh have come together into a thick mass, sugar is added and cooking continues with stirring. Some recipes also add khoya, milk solids that have already been cooked down. A version made starting from milk and a version supplemented with khoya cannot be made with the same timing.

The mixture is flavored with cardamom or the like and spread onto a lightly greased tray. Once it has cooled somewhat, it is cut into squares or diamonds and scattered with pistachios or the like. In Shuchi Agrawal’s home recipe, the flesh is sautéed in ghee and then added to milk that has been brought to a boil, combined with sugar and cardamom, and spread on a tray to set. It is cut not only into squares but into any shape desired and then offered. Some versions are soft enough to be scooped up and eaten while still warm, and how far the mixture is cooked down determines its final form.

Its closeness to halwa and its form as a cut sweet

The closely related lauki halwa (2015, Mrigankchoubey / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0). The downscaled version from the source is used, with no changes to the content after retrieval.

Its ingredients and process are also close to those of lauki halwa, in which bottle gourd is cooked with milk. Among sweets called lauj or barfi, some take the form of a mixture spread on a tray and cut into pieces, so the way a sweet is presented also offers a clue for telling these sweets apart. However, because the names overlap in home cooking, a strict line cannot be drawn based on firmness alone.

On Janmashtami, the celebration of Krishna’s birth, some households offer this sweet of milk and vegetable. One cook remembers their family making it and handing it out on this day, and as an adult phoned their mother to ask how to make it. Some households eat bottle gourd on fasting days, and some people make a soft lauj for Janmashtami. Unlike sweets made mainly from grain flour, it is a sweet made by cooking vegetable flesh down with milk.

Glossary