Making Kulfi. Easy, Beautiful Indian Ice Cream, No Machines!
Over the last 21 years I have cooked a lot of Indian food. I've tried my hand at a lot of different things from wrapping samosas, to frying vadi, baking chapatti and dhoklas, naan and coorgi. I've made rice puddings and payasams, burfi and modaks. I've pickled and cured and smoked. There's not much I haven't tried and when you see the picture above, you're looking at one of them.
It's called Kulfi and it is a creamy frozen Indian dessert. Some people call it Indian ice cream but that's not really what it is. Ice cream is whipped, beaten and aerates as it's freezes as anybody who's ever cranked one of those old-timey ice cream machines knows only too well. Making kulfi involves no whipping and no beating. It's mixed together, then poured into molds and frozen. It's richer, creamier and much, much denser than ice cream. It's also a lot easier to make even if you already own an ice cream machine.
Don't get me wrong. I love my ice cream machine. It's one of the best purchases I ever made, but it's got it's faults (don't we all) one of which is the need to freeze the mixer bowl for at least 24 hours before any ice cream can be made. Sure there are automatic, all-in-one units that will give you instant ice cream just by flipping the switch any time one desires it. But I kind of look on my machine as good pants emergency brake. It keeps me from going too ice cream crazy too easily. If I want to eat ice cream, I have to think about it for 24 hours at least. It allows for cooler heads (and some extra workout time) to prevail. Of course once my bowl is frozen I just need to flip a switch and 30 minutes later I'm eating ice cream, so there is that.
With kulfi it's a lot simpler. Mix, pour, freeze, enjoy. It doesn't get much simpler than that. So why oh why did it take me soooo long to get on the kulfi train? I thought I needed kulfi molds. Most of the kulfi I'd seen was served like this.
I thought okay, I don't have official kulfi molds like the kulfiwallahs, so why try. And then I went to my gleaning pal Kristens' tag sale and found this for a dollar!
It was begging to be filled with creamy, mangoey, nutty goodness. It called to me.. .buy me buy me, you know you want kulfi. Just do it. So, I did.
The next thing was finding the best way to make kulfi. There are a lot of recipes out there and a lot of techniques. Many ways of making classic kulfi involve reducing milk that's been sweetened and flavored down to evaporated milk consistency by slow cooking, usually in clay pots and lots of stirring. Since this dessert was once reserved for Indian royalty, finding ice and elbow grease was not anything they had to worry about much. They had people to take care of that for them.
Now that's all well and good, and I may actually decide to do it that way one of these days. But right now we're in the finishing stages of our latest script, and the only thing that I'm thinking about reducing is the page count. Luckily (since I don't have a palace staff at my beck and call) there's another easier way to tackle this dessert, and that's using a combination of evaporated milk, condensed milk and cream, minimal stirring involved.
One of the classic flavors of kulfi is mango...think of it as the kulfi equivalent of vanilla ice cream. So that's what I made. With a minimum of work and a few hours of freezing, I was eating fabulous mango kulfi.
Kulfi
Here's what to do:
Peel and chunk up 2 ripe mangos
Put them in a blender or food processor and reduce to a puree. Set aside.
In a large bowl mix together:
1 can of evaporated milk
1 can of swetened condensed milk
2 cups of whipping cream
1/2 cup of finely ground pistachios
Remove the seeds and grind them to a powder. Add it into the mix.
Finally mix in the mango puree.
When everything is blended, pour the mixture into a mold or a round stainless steel mixing bowl, or popsicle molds, whatever you have.
To unmold run some hot or warm water over the bottom of the mold and place it over the serving pate or dish...unmold!
Cut it into slices and serve it up!
Kulfi is a creamy, dense dessert, very refreshing on a hot, early Fall evening or after a spicy Indian feast. No elbow grease churning re freezing or machinery involved.
I loved this dessert! So did everyone else at the table. I was wondering where this treat had been all my life! I should have made kulfi years ago, but now that I know how easy it is, I'm certainly going to be making it more often. I can't wait to experiment with other flavor options.
The next thing on my must have list are real pyramid shaped kulfi molds and hitting up more tag sales in the hope of unearthing some interestingly shaped vintage jello molds. I'm also determined in my quest for old skool authenticity to try making this treat in clay the old fashioned way. As soon as the script is safely turned in, I'm going to be giving it a whirl. Yes, really.
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