Shrikhand, a easy to make Indian sweet dish, can be compared to Fro-yo. - A step by step picture recipe.

Shrikhand, a easy to make Indian sweet dish, can be compared to Fro-yo.

Recipe as follows :-

• To start off we'll make the yogurt, so for that we have 2 liters of warm milk buffalo milk.

  Always boil the milk before making the yogurt. this ensures that the milk does not spoil during the fermentation process.

  The milk should not be hot. If its very hot the milk gets coagulates and you might end up getting a grainy yogurt.

  And also not cold, as the yogurt won’t be able to set at all.

  So just warm milk will do just fine to make a great yogurt.

• Here we have 2 tbsp of yogurt. Which we will mix in the warm milk.

  It is very important to dissolve the yogurt culture uniformly in the milk. Whisk very well with a spoon or a whisker.

  After mixing the culture in the milk place it in a warm spot like a turned off oven to ferment and set for at least 2 hours.

• Since it is hot climate out here, the yogurt has set very fast, place the set yogurt in the refrigerator to chill for 2-3 hours.

• Now to drain all the water from the yogurt, take a muslin cloth, place it in a large bottom bowl.

• And place the chilled yogurt in it.

• Now what we do here to drain the liquid is to let gravity do its work and hang the muslin cloth filled with yogurt over a sink overnight(3-4 hours is good enough, but the more you let it sit the thicker finished product you get, which is definitely always better :) ).

• The yogurt sans the water after hung overnight in the muslin cloth. The starting 2 liter milk yielded more or less 1 kg of hung yogurt.

• Now on to preparing the Shrikhand, take the yogurt in big bottom bowl.

• Add in about 300 gms(this is wholly up to individual taste, some like it less sweet, some like it more, so adjust the quantity according to taste) powdered sugar.

• And mix it well with a hand mixer, continuously scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Don't over mix it, just enough till you feel the sugar has dissolved, even if you feel there are some lumps remaining, they will dissolve themselves when you put the Shrikhand in the refrigerator to chill.

• Now that our base is ready, I went ahead and made two flavors of Shrikhand.

  Firstly my favorite, and as they are in season right now, Mango. So I took a large 250 gms of ripe Alphonso Mango and pureed it in the blender.

• And pour in the mango puree with half of the Shrikhand base.

• Mix it well, and ready to refrigerate.

• The other half is more traditional preparation, add in a teaspoon of cardamom powder, a tablespoon of chopped pistachios and 1/4th a teaspoon of crushed Saffron in the Shrikhand base. Mix it well, and ready to refrigerate.

• Though the prepared Shrikhand can be eaten as is, what I like to do is freeze it and eat it like Fro-yo. Serve the Mango Shrikhand with some diced up Mango on top.

• And serve the traditional Shrikhand with a sprinkle of chopped up pistachios.

bon appetit