Makin Kulfi

Dinner party coming up on Thursday, the wonderful Pam and Keith coming to ours for some Indian feasting action.

Its best to leave the delicitate spicing to the subcontinental genius that is my wife, so I thought I'd have a go at making some Kulfi, or Indian Icecream.

Wondering through tesco the other day we chanced upon some rather nice looking turkish delight, and having picked up some decent dark chocolate I set about making some chocolate kulfi and some turkish delight kulfi, to be served together.

Ingredients:

6 pints of whole milk
225g of sugar
turkish delight
rose water
saffron
red food colouring
two bars of dark choloate
some butter
ground seeds from about 8-10 green cardamon pods

To start, the boring slow bit - the milk needed to be reduced by two thirds down to two pints. The point of this is to increase the fat content of the milk and, I think, to concentrate the sugary quality of the lactose therein.

So into a large heavy bottomed pan, and gently boil for about 90 minutes stirring frequently to make sure it doesn't burn. A bit like making risotto but much much longer. Some would say meditative, I would say dull.

Once reduced down, mix in the sugar and divide into two pans. Into one pan, chuck in some chopped up rose turkish delight and melt down as far as possible. Then add rose water to taste and some red food colouring as otherwise it'll look a little insipid.

Into the other bowl, add the chocolate - I melted the bars with a little butter - and mix. Then chuck in the ground cardamon to taste, the slight lemon tartness of the spice cuts through the rich chocolate.

Allow the two mixtures to cool in moulds then put into the freezer.

Now the great thing here is you don't need an icecream maker. I think its because as the milk is reduced down, there is less water to freeze and therefore less icecrystals form than would for normal icecream.

Pictures to follow, but highly yummy.