How To Make Falooda (Indian Dessert Drink)

Falooda is a yummy drink/dessert made with milk, a hint of refreshing rose flavor and healthy basil seeds...all topped off with a scoop of ice cream. Falooda...funny name, serious dessert. Enjoy. For a detailed recipe, click: http://www.showmethecurry.com/2007/09/04/falooda-indian-drinkdessert/

Serves:

2

You Will Need

• 2 cups (500ml) Whole Milk
• ½ tsp Basil Seeds , Can be bought at any Asian grocery store
• ½ cup Vanilla Ice Cream
• 1 handful Falooda Sev Strands
• 5 Rose Syrup
• 1 ½ Sugar , or to taste
• pinch Cardamom Powder
• 1 tsp Coarsely Ground Pistachios

Step 1:

Welcome to Show Me the Curry.com. I’m Hetal. I'm Anuja and today we’re going to show you how to make Falooda. Falooda is a rose flavored milk with ice cream in it. It’s visually good-looking and it’s perfect as a drink or as a desert.

Step 2:

Here’s what you’re going to need. Two cups whole milk, 1/2 teaspoon basil seeds (can be bought at any Asian grocery store), 1/2 cup vanilla ice cream, one handful of Falooda Sev strands, five tablespoons of rose syrup, 1 and 1/2 tablespoons sugar (or to taste), a pinch of cardamom powder, one teaspoon of coarsely ground pistachios.

Step 3:

We’re going to start off by boiling approximately two cups of water and that will be for our Falooda Sev to be cooked in. At the same time, we can get our milk also going. We’re going to boil two cups of milk, whole milk. While the milk is boiling, we’re going to go ahead and soak our basil seeds, also known as tukmaria. That can be bought at any Indian grocery store. They need to be soaked for, about a half an hour. When you soak basil seeds, they actually plump up and gives a nice texture to your Falooda.

Step 4:

Our water has finally come to a boil, so we’re going to drop the Falooda Sev in. Now this, when it comes in the package it’s a big mess of Sev. It’s really hard to cut and to eat, when it’s that long. What you might want to do is to take some kitchen shears and chop it up a little bit before you drop it into the water. It makes it a lot easier to eat later. You’re going to cook it for only about two to three minutes.

Step 5:

It’s been about three minutes since our Sev has been cooking. So it’s softened up really nicely. I think we can switch our stove off. Just let it sit there for a few minutes. Looks like our milk has already come to a boil, so at this point we can go ahead and add our sugar and our cardamom powder. Stir that in a little bit. Anuja:Falooda, again, is one of those sweet foods in India. People on carts go around with these big urban pots and that’s how they sell it. Because they don’t have provisions for icing and for making it cold. Urban pots work out very, very good. It’s absolutely delicious.

Step 6:

We have to put the rose syrup now? We can go ahead and switch this off now, because it’s come to a boil. Add the rose syrup. This rose syrup is sweetened. So not only does it add this wonderful rose flavor, but it also sweetens it up a bit. The Falooda is traditionally served chilled. We’re going to put this into the refrigerator for a little while and let it cool down. Then we can add the remaining ingredients in there. Actually, we can go ahead and add the Sev at this time too. It will cool down at the same time. We’re first going to have to drain the Sev and remove all the water. Then add it into Falooda. It’s really easy if you have a nice small Sev. It works really well. Give it a nice mix. It already looks great. We’ll be back once this gets chilled.

Step 7:

We’re back with our Falooda. It’s been chilled. Now we’re going to strain our basil seeds. You can see they’re nice and plump now. Let’s go ahead and strain them first. We’ll go ahead and add our basil seeds into our milk. At this time, we can also add a little bit of ice cream. This ice cream is actually going to be melted into the milk. We’re going to use some separate ice cream to actually serve it with. We’re using vanilla ice cream. It’s everybody’s personal choice. A lot of people use a padam pistachio ice cream or you can use strawberry if you like also. Anything that you like, it usually goes well with this. We mix it around and try to just to melt up a bit. We’ve actually added the ice cream in the Falooda to give it more flavor and to pink it up a little bit. It’s melted nicely, so I think we’re ready to serve.

Step 8:

All right. Here are our glasses. I’m going to go ahead and put a scoop of ice cream in it. You might have some trouble getting it out. Then we just pour this in. This is the challenge. You want a little bit of the tukmaria, basil seeds, as well as the Sev to go in there. It tends to settle at the bottom, so just make sure you stir it nicely.

Step 9:

So many holidays coming up. There’s Diwali. There’s Eve. There’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year. Actually, you don’t even need a holiday or vacation or celebration, you can have this any time of the year. The good thing about this also, is it is definitely a make-ahead desert. No last minute pre-planning. Nothing. You just make it and keep it in the fridge. When you’re ready to serve, just pull it out.

Step 10:

Get some ice cream and pour it out. Okay, our Falooda is now in our glasses. We’re going to garnish it with coarsely ground pistachios, just sprinkled on top, lightly. Actually the good thing about this, if you want to make it sweeter you can. If you don’t, that’s fine too. Even a little lesser sweet, people can handle it. It just tastes wonderful. Join us again at Show Me the Curry.com. Adding a pinch of spice to your life.

Thirsty Thursdays: Honey Cream Soda

With the those lazy crazy days of summer not too far away each Thursday I'll be sharing a new drink recipe with you- cold, herbal, cocktail, mocktail, liqueur... to name a few.

One of my early food memories was The Pop Shoppe. This 80's birthday party institution was a dream for a kid- a warehouse full of endless varieties of sugary carbonated beverages in all their artificial coloured glory! Your Dad grabbed the shiny red plastic crate and you picked as many as would fit, trying to decide between the shiny coloured lime, cream sodas and grape, over the always popular root beet and cola. When you had crashed from the sugar high that certainly must have followed, you returned the case of empty bottles to The Poppe Shoppe, and the cycle would continue. Hello, recycling genius! Why don't places like this make a come back? I'm not sure if there is indeed still Pop Shoppes around but those were good times.

Nowadays I have rare pop* cravings but when I need a bit of sparkling sugar I go straight to Boylan who's Red Birch Beer I have a thing for. The thing about such drinks is that they are simply sugar, flavouring and carbonated water. All very readily available and inexpensive ingredients. With most high quality sodas costing almost $2 a drink, I cringe at the mark up, and I also see an opportunity to make it myself.

Cream soda and me go way back. I grew up with a penchant for the garish red cream soda of my youth- my Slurpee of choice as well as a mean ice cream float. But sometime in my adolescence Vanilla Cream Soda came about and I started to take to those Vanilla Cream Sodas, that is until a string of bad experiences. Each time I had a particular brand I would end up feeling queasy and then, well perhaps you can guess...( I don't really think a food blog is the place for the that "V" word) After a few occasions of such incident, each with my very observant best friend, she started cutting me off, even though I still desired said beverage and at the time didn't seem to care about the after effects. But she always did look out for me and she kept me in check and off of Vanilla Cream Soda for a few years. Not sure what was in that drink but something tells me it wasn't the vanilla. Eventually I did get back onto the vanilla wagon, but never went back to that brand and am happy to report there have been no more incidences.

Recently I started thinking about cream soda and reading some labels for ingredients. Since most are just a vanilla syrup and I with a plentiful supply of vanilla beans, I started to do a little research. With a little help from a fabulous book by the Vanilla Queen herself, I created this homemade cream soda: the most beautiful creamy, honey kissed, vanilla beverage. It is creamy, complex and full of real vanilla flavour. The addition of honey, such a natural partner for vanilla, gives this version a lovely depth. You won't believe how easy this is.

*in Canada most of us tend to refer to carbonated sweet beverages as pop, the same thing those of you in parts of the US would refer to as Soda.

Honey Cream Soda

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

3 Tbsp honey (don't use a dark honey here)

2 vanilla beans, split down the middle and scraped

3 Tbsp vanilla extract

Sparkling water

Combine sugar, water and honey in a small saucepan over high heat. Stir until sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil and leave at a slow boil for about 5 minutes or until it starts to visibly thicken. Remove from heat, add vanilla. Let sit overnight to steep, then pour into a bottle/jar and store in the fridge. This will keep for months in the fridge.

To serve: Add 3 Tbsp syrup to a glass, top with about 1 cup sparkling water, stir well then top with ice. That's it! You can vary the sweetness level to your taste of course.

For a delicious adult version: add a shot of rum or bourbon to the glass.

Other uses: while this used alone will exhaust your supply, this is such a valuable ingredient to have on hand. Pour a little into a fruit salad, or into your daily tea and of course if you are a mixologist at all your will find never ending reasons to use this.

Cream Drinks

Sometimes we get so used to ordering our favorite drinks that we forget they're actually treats. An easy way to remind ourselves of what a nice departure from normal the cocktail can be is to embrace the richness of a good cream drink. By combining the smooth texture and versatility of cream with the potent flavors of spirits and mixers, these cocktails are the grown-up equivalent of a rally around the ice cream truck.

White Russian

Without a doubt the most commonly ordered cream drink at any bar (and likely the most common home-made) is the White Russian. We'll take this opportunity to talk about the proper way to build any cream drink. As is the rule for all cocktails, the heaviest elements go on top. In this case, that means starting with an ounce of vodka.

There's some debate about whether or not cream drinks should be shaken instead of built in the glass. Personally, I don't see why anyone who cares about flavor would build in the glass. No amount of stirring is going to combine the flavors of your drink like a few stout shakes. The reason people have a problem with shaking is because they're worried about watering down their drink. Of course, if you build it quickly the ice won't have time to melt and your drink will stay potent.

So, fill your shaker halfway with ice cubes, add one ounce of vodka followed by one half ounce of coffee liqueur, the most popular being Kahlua. Top that off with an ounce of cream and shake no more than eight times. Serve in a rocks glass with ice or up in a cocktail glass.

Grasshopper

The Grasshopper is, in my opinion, barely a cocktail. It doesn't include any hard spirits. Instead, it's built with two different kinds of liqueur that don't get much attention these days. Start with a half ounce of white creme de cacao, that's chocolate liqueur. Avoid the stuff with coloring in it. Half of the appeal of the Grasshopper is its visual. Next, add one half ounce of green creme de menthe, which is peppermint liqueur. This is where the color is going to come from. The stuff is practically neon green, but an ounce of cream will lighten it considerably. This drink benefits more than almost any other from the froth that naturally occurs with shaking a cream drink. Serve your Grasshopper up in a cocktail glass with an optional garnish of cocoa powder.

The Orgasm

How could I do an article about fun drinks without the obligatory dirty joke drink? That's not to say that this complex treat is a joke in flavor. The Orgasm is the exception to the rule about shaking. When dealing with this many distinct ingredients, a drink can benefit from layering instead of homogenizing. Start with any tall glass half full with ice cubes. Add one ounce of amaretto because it's the lightest of the three spirits in the drink. Follow that with a half ounce of coffee liqueur, then a half ounce of Irish Cream. Top it all off with your regular cream. It's up to you whether or not you want to stir, but it couldn't hurt to give it a few swirls. You can also start this drink off with an extra splash of vodka to make it a Screaming Orgasm.