Recipe: Make Helly Raichura’s Creamy, Cardamom-Scented Payasam for Dessert

Helly Raichura follows her instincts – and her nose. The Melbourne-based chef dives deep into Indian history and culture to craft elaborate tasting menus at Enter Via Laundry, her 20-seat fine diner in Carlton North. There’s no butter chicken here. Instead, expect Mughlai -inspired feasts from 17th-century India and vegetarian banquets drawn from Kerala’s Onam Sadhya festival. The result is an evocative and unexpected journey through the subcontinent’s diverse cuisines.

In her first cookbook, The Food of Bharat, as in her restaurant, Raichura plays both chef and historian. Across 68 recipes, she draws on millennia of Indian culinary evolution – from lentil fritters described in ancient Vedic texts to dishes shaped by India’s colonial era, like aloo paratha, and her intricate Masterchef pressure test creation, I am not pasta.

Among the book’s many highlights is payasam (also known as kheer or payesh) – a sweet, creamy rice pudding and traditional temple offering (Raichura traces its ancient origins all the way back to the Mahabharata). Made with rice, milk and jaggery instead of refined sugar, this simple, aromatic pudding is gently perfumed with cardamom and topped with almonds, raisins and rose petals. Served warm or cold, it’s a dessert that connects India’s past and present in every spoonful. You’ll just need a kadhai or heavy-based wok to make it.

Payasam (sweetened rice cooked in milk) by Helly Raichura

Serves 4
Preparation time: 1 hour (for soaking)
Cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

15g ghee
100g Sona Masoori rice, soaked for 1 hour then drained
1.1L full-cream (whole) milk
120g jaggery
30g slivered almonds
10g raisins
Seeds from 2 green cardamom pods, crushed to a powder
Fresh rose petals, to garnish

Method

Heat the ghee in a kadhai or heavy-based wok over a medium heat. Once it has melted, add the drained rice and turn gently to coat each grain with the ghee. Toast for 4 minutes, ensuring you don’t brown the rice.

Now add the milk and continue to stir over a medium heat.

Continuously scrape the bottom of the pot and keep stirring to avoid the mixture catching. Cook until the rice is soft but not disintegrated, about 10–15 minutes, then add the jaggery, mix and cook for another 5 minutes.

Take it off the heat and add the slivered almonds, raisins and powdered cardamom seeds, mixing well.

Serve warm or leave in the fridge to cool before garnishing with fresh rose petals.

This is an edited extract from The Food of Bharat by Helly Raichura, published by Hardie Grant Books. Photography by Jana Langhorst and Brett Cole.

Additional reporting by Dan Cunningham, Audrey Payne, Gitika Garg, Sandra Tan and Holly Bodeker-Smith.