Wednesday, 1 August 2012

Doodhpak (rice pudding)


This is one of my favourite Indian sweet of all time. The ingredients are not many and the preparation is simple. However, it does take time and patience. I usually make enough for it to last a few days so that I can have my fill and a good recompense of the time spent stirring the milk. It is the perfect sweet to eat with or after a meal or even on its own. 

Ingredients

4 pints of full cream milk (2 litres – the semi skimmed will not work as creaminess is the essence of the dish)
Sugar (adjust the amount your preference)
Almonds, pistachios and cashew nuts (a small handful of each)
Raisins (a small handful)
8 – 10 pods of cardamom
Rice – a small handful of nice fragrant basmati rice

Preparation

Gather all the ingredients and roughly chop the nuts as well as wash the raisins. Put the milk in a pan on the heat. Add sugar, nuts and raisins to the milk. Break open the cardamom pods and crush the seeds and add into the milk. Wash the rice and have it ready. Once the milk comes to boil add the rice into it. Now turn the heat down to medium and allow the milk to continue boiling gently. 

It would be prudent to keep an eye and stir the milk often so that it does not boil over or start sticking to the bottom of the pan. The dish is ready once the rice gets cooked. However, you can boil it to get the consistency you want. I prefer it fairly thick and leave the milk to cook till it reduces to half the original amount. Take it off the heat and cool for a while in the pan. Then stir the milk to break up any layer of cream that forms on top. This, now can be placed in the fridge to chill.

Here are some other recipes of the same dish -
 
You can leave the rice out altogether and you would get rabdi. This is fairly thickened milk with the nuts and raisins and tastes wonderful too. This rabdi can also then be frozen and had as ice cream or kulfi. There is a slight variation also when you can add fine vermicelli instead of rice. However the vermicelli has to be slightly browned in a small amount of ghee before adding the milk and nuts and letting it cook till the vermicelli is cooked and the milk thickened to right consistency. 

Here are some recipes for seviyan (vermicelli pudding) -

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