Ek Tho Matcha-cha

My dad came over to the US in 1973, riding the wave of Indian immigration in the 70's and 80's. For most of my childhood, I remember him as a serious man, reserved and principaled, hardworking and quiet. My parents followed the more traditional gender roles characteristic of Indian families, in which my mom stayed at home with the kids and my dad provided for the family. In a lot of ways, he was more a presence than a person.

I'm not sure if it's the old age, or the fact that I'm now living as an immigrant in another country, but all of that has changed quite dramatically over the past few years, and we've started bonding a lot more. He tells me tidbits of his time in India, little gems of stories that involve courage in the face of poverty, and being an awkward engineering student dreaming of talking to a girl.

This isn't really a story, but one of my favorite gifs of his young life is when he told me that his entire dorm, some two thousand skinny Indian engineering nerds, tried to learn to cha-cha to win over the hearts of the ladies. "Ek tho" is "one two" in Hindi, and I find the image of a heavily-accented dance instructor yelling "ek tho cha-cha-cha" to the lot of them kind of incredible.

Soooo long story short, here's a fun recipe for a matcha cheesecake, dedicated to my dad and inspired by my close friend, Mathias Bannwart, who shared the recipe and tips with me (MB tips are scattered throughout the instructions) :) Happy baking!

Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 1hr 10mins

Ingredients

• 200ish grams of tea biscuits (MB tip: 1 pack of Petite Buerre cookies from Coop)
• 150g unsalted butter, melted

Filling:

• 2½ cups (600g,1lb/5oz) Philadelphia cream cheese (MB tip: three packs of Philadelphia cream cheese from Coop)
• 1 cup whole-fat quark or sour cream
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup (100ml,3½oz) heavy cream
• 200g (7 oz) white chocolate (MB tip: 2 white chocolate bars from Coop)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup corn starch
• 5 Tbsp Matcha powder (can be found in any Asian grocery store)

Instructions

Make the crust:

2. Put the cookies in a bag. Use a rolling pin and have at them until their a nice powder. You can use a foodprocessor if you have one, but I found the cookie smackdown to be pretty enjoyable. Once this is pulverized, mix in the 150g melted butter.
3. Squish the mixture into the bottom of a 9" (23cm) springform cake pan.
4. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes, then pull out and let it cool

Now for the good stuff

5. Get your chocolate melting. Break the white chocolate into pieces and put in a double boiler on low heat. Stir occasionally over the course of the rest of the recipe, until it melts.
6. Beat together the cream cheese and quark/sour cream. (MB tip: don't mix for too long or the cake becomes really dense)
7. In a separate bowl, mix together the 1 cup sugar, ½ cup cornflour and only 4 of the tablespoons of matcha. Add to the cheese mixture slowly and fold in.
8. Beat in the eggs one at a time and then fold in the heavy cream.
9. Come back to the chocolate mixture and stir until melted. Mix this into the cheese mixture.
10. Pour this over the crust and spread evenly. Cover with foil and put it in the oven for about 40 minutes.
11. Turn your oven off and let the cheesecake continue to cook for 30 minutes.
12. Pull out and let cool. Once room temperature, stick in the fridge for 2-3 hours. Pull out and sprinkle the 1 tbsp remaining Matcha on top. I sprinkled on a little chocolate powder and a strawberry too, just for accent.