Monday, August 22, 2011

Cashew Payasam/Kheer

Today's sweet dish for Krishna Jayanthi aka Janmashtami, this recipe was adapted from Shanthi's blog, I refer to this blog for some of my traditional South Indian cooking. A lot of her recipes, tips and methods of cooking are very much like mom's, I should probably push mom to start writing a food blog :)

Ingredients:

Whole cashews - 13-15
Hot water - 1/2 cup
Coconut - 2 tbsp (if you are using frozen, bring it to room temperature)
Sugar - 1/4 cup (or add 1/6 cup and add the remaining according to taste)
Hot whole milk - 1 cup
Cardamom powder - from about 8 pods
Saffron - 2 pinches (take some of the hot milk in a small bowl and soak the saffron in it and set aside)

As always I decided to make 1/2 the quantity!

Soak the cashews in hot water for about 1 hour. Save this water! In a blender, make a paste of cashews and coconut with a little bit of water (enough to make a thick paste). Add the remaining water and mix. Heat a small non-stick pot on low heat and add the paste, bring it to a boil (keep stirring to avoid the paste from sticking to the bottom) and then add sugar. Once the sugar has dissolved mix in the hot milk and add powdered cardamom and the soaked saffron+milk. The original recipe says to turn the stove off after the sugar dissolves but I noticed that the kheer was too runny after I added the milk, I wanted it to thicken up a little bit so I turned the heat back on and let it boil (on low-medium heat) for about 15 minutes (make sure to frequently stir the kheer).

When you are happy with the consistency turn the stove off, let it completely cool down and move it to the refrigerator for a few hours. The final consistency is more like a semi-thick drink and according to me, this payasam is better chilled than hot :)

Where is the picture you ask? Well, the above recipe made about 4 mini glasses and we devoured it so fast that I didn't remember to take any pictures :(

1 comment:

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