Kulfi

I've read about the Indian type of ice cream some time ago and it seemed very intriguing and after my second attempt at clotted cream, I couldn't find it in my heart to throw away the leftover milk. So it was the perfect opportunity to try out this delicacy.



I'd never had this at Indian restaurants, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I used the recipe from my Classic Vegetarian Indian Cookbook. Now remember that I used Jersey milk (fat content 4.5%) that had been mixed with some 280 ml extra thick double cream (48%), then left to stand for 12 hours, then kept in a bain marie for some 3 hours, then cooled down and kept in the fridge for over 48 hours. I will try this out with regular milk and see if it performs as well.

Ingredients

4 cardamom pods
0.5 tsp ground saffron
1 litre milk
8 tsp caster sugar
crushed raw pistachio nuts

Method

1. Peel the cardamom pods and grind the seeds.
2. In a pestle and mortar, grind the saffron.
3. Place the milk in a dish of at least the double volume of the milk and bring the milk to boil on high, while stirring almost constantly so that no skin forms and the milk doesn't burn to the bottom.
4. When the milk boils, reduce the heat to medium and add the saffron. Keep stirring until the milk is reduced to abut 400 ml, i. e. less than half it's original volume. This can take some 40 - 60 minutes.
5. At some point, the milk will quite markedly go thicker, the consistency should be a bit like Bechamel sauce. Take it off the heat and stir in the sugar and the ground cardamom.
6. Leave to cool completely or dip in cold water while stirring, to speed things up.
7. Place paper muffin cups in a muffin tin and distribute the kulfi into them. 1 litre resulted in 5 and a decent amount of licking the bowl.
8. Cover the surface with crushed raw pistachios and place in the freezer for at least 4 hours.

The kulfi is traditionally placed in special conical moulds, but I don't have these and the book suggested using muffin tins instead. These I have, but they are non-stick and I didn't want to scrape the tin while struggling to get the kulfi out. So I put paper muffin cups in the muffin tin.

After the freeze, the kulfi had expanded, but placing the muffin tin under a hot tap for a couple of seconds loosened things up.

I'll come back with an update on how it works with regular milk, that hasn't gone through the clotted cream making stage. Stirring for about an hour sounds tedious, but it's really not too bad at all.

We had some for dessert today and it was very creamy and smooth and tasty. Perhaps reduce the amount of cardamom. And I'd like to try out some other flavours as well, I think vanilla and cinnamon would work very nicely too. It could perhaps do with a little bit more sugar, but both Lundulph and I thought it's nice when it's not too sweet.

To serve it, because the kulfi hasn't been churned, it should be cut up into pieces, to make it a bit easier to eat.

Lundulph didn't want me to do this entry because he was worried that a restaurateur might steal the recipe. He thought it was very tasty indeed.