burnt toast

When I was in high school, my mum and I had a Friday evening tradition of going to our favourite Indian restaurant for dinner. Amongst many other places, we’ve been to India three times together, and I will say without a smidge of shame that one of the main reasons that made us keep wanting to go back was the food. The history and the culture and all that amazingness too of course, but man, that food.

This is possibly my favourite Indian dessert, although I’d rather not have favourites. To all you kulfi-novices-soon-to be-onverted out there, kulfi is a type of ice cream. It is prepared by evaporating sweetened and flavoured milk by slowly cooking it, until it has reduced considerably in volume and has thickened in consistency. This deliciousness is then frozen in little moulds and then people like me stuff their faces with them.

Without further ado, make this, now. Especially if you’re in Melbourne and sweating yourself senseless. Or because you just think you need to impress the pants off yourself.

By all means, replace the milk partially or fully with cream. I’ve just always done it with milk. And basically it’s just a very rare occasion where I find half a litre of cream in my fridge looking at me with big eyes, begging to be made into ice cream. But then again, the dairy section of your fridge might be different.

Cardamom and Pistachio Kulfi

400ml mi full cream milk

10 cardamom pods, seeds removed and finely ground

1 big pinch of salt

1 can/379g condensed milk

1 can/354ml evaporated milk

50g pistachios, finely chopped

Combine the milk, the cardamom and the salt in a small saucepan and slowly bring to the boil. Remove from heat and pour into a large square plastic container. Whisk in the condensed- and evaporated milk. Let it come to room temperature, or if your as impatient as me, immediately stick it in the freezer. Every half hour or so, whisk the mixture with a fork so as to break the ice crystals, you know the story. After about 4 hours or more, depending on how good your freezer is, your mixture will have the consistency of slushy snow. Now stir in the pistachios and fill into whatever mould makes you happy. I usually use small cups or those popsicle trays you can buy. If you’re lucky enough to have 2 of those trays, I reckon you could make 14-16. Now put them back into the freezer to firm up. When ready, hold a knife under a hot tap and slide it around the edge of each popsicle until it comes out.