(upbeat music)
- Hello, my friends.
I'm Matt.
Welcome back to my kitchen.
For the past several months, I have been learning to cook
with new ingredients from all around the world.
First, it was Maggi noodles from India
which I used to make a fried chicken sandwich.
Then it was bagoong from the Philippines
which I used to make puttanesca.
Now, once again I have been challenged
to use an ingredient from India.
- I'm Vishal from Buzzfeed India,
and Matt, I'm about to give you the biggest challenge
of your life.
We Indians love our food.
Do I even need to tell you that?
But one fact that's not very popular about us Indians
is that we love our biscuits.
Today, I'm about to tell you
about one of our most beloved, Parle-G biscuits.
They started producing in the year 1939
and they never stopped.
We got independence in 1947.
I love dipping these biscuits in the tea and eating it.
It's just the best, best experience ever.
It's so comforting.
Matt, today, I am challenging you to make an original dish
using Parle-G as an ingredient.
Can you do this?
- I can do it.
- You have to.
- All right, Vishal, once again, challenge accepted.
I'm gonna pop over to my favorite Indian grocery store
to see if they have these Parle-G biscuits.
(upbeat music)
There they are.
Parle-G biscuits.
Parle-G original gluco cookies.
I don't know what a gluco cookie is.
Gluco cookies.
Okay, so gluco cookies just mean it's slightly sweetened.
So gluco for I'm assuming glucose or sugar.
Let's open it up.
Oh, it's quite ornate.
I wasn't expecting it to be quite so pretty looking.
It smells like an animal cracker.
It kind of tastes like an animal cracker too.
It's good.
I made myself a nice hot mug of tea here.
(upbeat music)
Ooh, very nice.
All in all, these biscuits are good.
Having it with tea is definitely the way to go.
So what I'm going to do is brainstorm for a little bit,
try and think about some ways I can use the Parle-G.
(upbeat music)
I've done a bit of brainstorming,
made my trip to the store
and now it is time to cook.
So I actually want to make two recipes
just because Parle-G is so simple.
I want to make it a few different ways.
See how I can use it.
For this first recipe, I'm trying to make cookie butter.
I have a food processor here
to which I am adding 20 Parle-G biscuits.
And
(whirring)
Ooh!
(whirring)
That looks pretty good to me.
Nice and fine.
And to this I am adding evaporated milk,
sweetened condensed milk, and finally some cubed butter.
And this looks like a lot of butter
but it's not meant to be a healthy recipe so whatever.
(whirring)
Scrape down the sides.
Cookie butter is supposed to have
a bit of a peanut butter texture
and this looks a little bit loose and watery for my taste.
So let's add one, two, three, four, five.
(whirring)
That looks pretty good.
It's very smooth and creamy.
Let's get that cookie butter down in my cookie butter jar.
And there you have it.
Parle-G cookie butter comes together
in like less than 10 minutes.
Super easy.
All right, moment of truth.
Whoa, honestly, this is low key perfect.
It's super creamy, super light.
The flavor is nice and sweet and a little bit mild.
It definitely tastes like the Parle-G.
This is absolutely delicious.
I would have this with fruit.
I would have it on toast.
Eat it straight up.
Vishal, good luck making this.
I hope you like it.
But I have one more recipe I want to try using the Parle-G
that I think takes it to the next level.
My second recipe involving these biscuits
is a Parle-G banana cream pie.
That's a mouthful.
So my plan is to use the Parle-G in the crust.
Shh.
So my plan is to use the Parle-G in the crust
as well as in the actual pie itself.
My handy food processor has returned
to which I am adding 40 Parle-G biscuit
which hopefully will fit.
I'm gonna have to do this in batches.
(whirring)
Let's see if we can fit the remaining ones in here.
And of course, if you don't have a food processor,
you can put them in a bag and smash them with something.
Very therapeutic.
(whirring)
And now that this is all nice and crumbled
I am adding my melted butter.
(whirring)
Scrape that off the sides.
To scoop my Parle-G right in there.
And I'm just gonna spread this out in a pretty even layer.
Measuring cup.
I'm just gonna use my measuring cup
to kind of press my Parle-G into my pie dish,
just gently pressing sides in.
I'm very happy with how this turned out.
I kind of want to just run my knife along the top.
I just want to make everything nice and even.
One more good little press.
And that is my Parle-G pie crust.
I'm just gonna pop this in the oven for about 10 minutes
so it crisps up a little bit,
gets a nice golden brown to it.
It's time to start my banana cream filling
but I want to up the Parle-G factor
of this pie just a little bit.
I have my milk here
to which I'm just gonna add one, two, three.
So I'm borrowing a technique
out of Christina Tosi's cookbook,
much like she uses cereal to flavor milk
for her different cereal milk ice creams.
I want to flavor the milk with Parle-G
so I'm just gonna let these soak up and then break down.
So it's a little bit difficult to tell
but there's all these bits of Parle-G
just floating around in my milk.
It's nice and dissolved.
Pour in my Parle-G milk.
Look at that.
There's a whole bunch of schmutz at the bottom.
Just gonna scrape that out.
I'm not too worried if there's big chunks in here
'cause I'm about to beat all this together
and so it doesn't really matter.
To this I'm adding my banana pudding mix.
And I am just gonna whisk until it's nice and combined
and it should start to thicken after a few minutes.
I also hope they have banana pudding in India.
I feel like it would be banana custard.
I tried looking it up to make sure that it was on sale there
and it looked like it, but this could backfire on me.
Let's test to see this pudding.
(upbeat music)
Yeah, that's set.
Honestly, I could probably add more Parle-G to the milk.
It's a little bit too late now, so, it's fine.
I have unsweetened whipped cream,
which I'm slowly and gradually going to add to my pudding
and I'm going to fold it in
so that I don't crush all of the air out of it.
I couldn't actually find unsweetened whipped cream anywhere.
So I just took heavy whipping cream and mixed it up.
The guide for me is about half the amount
of heavy whipping cream to whipped cream.
So in this case, I'm using about three cups
of whipped cream, which was one and a half cups
of heavy whipping cream.
The remaining third of my whipped cream.
Gently fold it in.
We can see how much fluffier this has gotten.
It's like a cloud.
And there you go.
It's not over mixed, but it's nice and fluffy.
That is my filling done.
Let's assemble this pie.
Here it is, the Parle-G crust for my pie.
It did shrink a little bit on the outside
but I'm actually quite happy with it.
Plus the true mark of a good crust.
(knife scratching)
Nice and crispy, music to my ears.
I just want to line the bottom with a bunch of sliced banana
just to add a little bit more banana flavor.
This is about two bananas sliced.
Perfect.
I'm just gonna pop you in there.
Slowly pour that over the top.
I just want to gradually spread all of my filling out.
Ooh la la.
And there it is.
My Parle-G banana cream pie.
It's not quite done yet.
I want to beautify it a little bit, but before I do,
I'm gonna pop this in the fridge for a little bit to set.
I'm just going to add some shredded coconut
to the top of this.
And I love, love, love coconut.
This looks excellent.
The toasted coconut really puts it over the top for me.
I think it adds a nice color contrast.
This looks great.
But does it taste great?
Ooh
Out pops very.
(beep)
There we have it.
Attempt number two much better than attempt number one.
I've got my Parle-G butter crust on it.
There's that thin layer of bananas on the bottom.
We've got our banana cream, our banana pudding on top,
and then the toasted coconut to finish it all off.
Here goes.
The Parle-G biscuits are perfect as the crust.
They're nice and crunchy.
The texture's really good.
It's not too sweet.
My banana filling is super light and fluffy
with good banana flavor.
You get those little banana slices in the bottom
that add like a nice texture to everything.
And then the toasted coconut on top
really kind of seals the deal.
Very happy with this pie.
It is absolutely delicious.
So refreshing.
It's a hot day out.
This is a cool pie.
I love it.
So, there we have it.
The two recipes I could come up with using Parle-G.
A Parle-G cookie butter
and the Parle-G banana cream pie.
I'm very happy with how they both turned out
but I am not the judge of them.
So I'm going to send these recipes to Vishal
and see what he thinks.
Thank you.
- When I first read through this recipe,
I realized that oOh my God, I'll have to be baking.
Indians don't really bake that much.
Many families also don't even have an oven in their house
because they don't feel the need to.
It's not something I do very easily.
I only started using an oven last year.
And the only thing I have baked til date is a banana bread.
So yes, I baked today and I'm really proud of it.
All right, I'm gonna start with the cookie butter.
It's like peanut butter, but you make it out of biscuits.
I have it here.
It literally looks like peanut butter to me.
Okay, let's do this.
Absolutely amazing.
I mean, wow.
The taste is very, very wholesome.
It's like the hug of Parle-G.
Okay, for the cookie butter,
I am definitely, definitely giving it a pass.
Time for the next one.
I don't know if my pie and your pie
looks the same, Mr. Matthew,
but I think I am kind of impressed with myself.
(upbeat music)
Oh my God.
Wow.
When you're biting it,
you're getting some part of the cream
and that crispy biscuit crunch.
It is absolutely amazing.
The Parle-G banana cream pie is also getting a pass for me.
Would you try this recipe at home?
Please let us know in the comments section down below,
what did you think?
And if you want to catch me and my friends
on a regular basis,
don't forget to subscribe to Buzzfeed India.
Oh yes.
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