Shikran is a dish that is hard to miss if you grew up in a Marathi household.
Just three ingredients: milk, chopped bananas and sugar. Add it the way you like. You can mash the bananas if you want and there is absolutely no cooking involved.
One can call it a solid banana milkshake, or even a banana dessert.
It’s versatile. Eat it as part of breakfast or as a snack. It can be quite filling in itself if eaten copiously and might give one food coma. Of course, I am ignoring the raging debate about whether the milk-banana combination is healthy.
Today on social media, there are food bloggers elevating shikran by using coconut milk, adding cardamom and finely-sliced almonds, and replacing sugar with jaggery. It’s supposed to give it a different texture, they say.
It’s not just my comfort food. Shikran takes me back to my childhood days, when life was simpler – I would eat shikran while watching cartoons like Bob the Builder or Pokémon before heading to school.
I had stopped eating shikran a long time ago, but returned to its comforting taste over the past year. The dish – if it can even be called that – is so simple that one has to try hard to get it wrong. But somehow I still cannot make it the way my mother does.
You’ve read Scroll.
Now help sustain it
Scroll is funded by readers, not corporate owners. If you believe our work matters, support our newsroom. Become a member today!
We’re not driven by clicks or corporate interests – just honest, independent reporting. Keep us going. Support Scroll today!