How to make Ghee/ Clarified butter/ Beurre noisette/ Brown Butter - Basics

With navrathri getting over, following closely is Diwali! Diwali can mean only one thing SWEETS! To make sweets we need a very key ingredient.... Ghee. Ghee is a staple in every Indian household's pantry. We use it on a daily basis to do tadkas for dishes, use it to make sweets, use a nice dollop on hot  rotis / rice or eat by the spoonful! And off late brown butter seems to be the latest trend in the baking world. So let us go on to make some ghee and  recipes that use ghee will follow ...

  Ingredients & Tools needed:

Butter - 1 Lb,Unsalted,  use the best butter  you can get your hands on
A tall heavy bottomed sauce pan - nonstick works for me
A stainless steel tea filter - I tried using plastic once and it resulted in disaster
A clean glass jar

Procedure:

• Chop the butter in 1 inch pieces. Place the pieces of butter in the pan you will be using to make the ghee in. Set over the counter top till the butter comes to room temperature. 
• Keep the glass jar with the stainless steel tea filter over its mouth

That chotu container was added to my collection thanks to M's grandma!!

• Once the butter has come to room temperature set over the stove and keep on low-medium heat, uncovered.
• The butter will melt and once all the butter has melted you will notice a white bubbling foam with a crackling sound. Don't worry this only means that the butter is boiling/ Cooking. Basically what is happening is that the water in the butter is getting expelled. Do not stir it with a spatula

• You will notice that gradually the intensity of the crackling comes down.

I've moved some of the foam to show you the color of the ghee  at this stage.

•  The white foam  slowly will develop brown specs

• Once the crackling stops be very careful. Turn the heat lower and just allow the ghee to be over heat for just less than a minute. There are different schools of thought on this. Some people like to take it off the heat as soon as the crackling stops. In my house my mom makes a slightly browned ghee, that is very aromatic and  flavorful. And that is pretty much the brown butter that is called for in recipes.

At this stage this is the color of the Ghee.

• Remove of the heat and pour the boiling hot ghee over the stainless steel filter. Once a friend  and I made ghee at her house and she used the plastic variety for straining tea and like geniuses we pour the hot ghee over it and it just melted! what a waste of ghee and a perfectly good filter!!

• The brown stuff is tasty but extremely unhealthy!  
• Let the ghee cool down and then you can close it with a tight lid.Ghee has a long shelf life if you avoid contamination. I have a small container that I use to fill ghee as and when I need from the big bottle just to avoid any water going into it or some food particle accidentally falling into it while serving or cooking.

There is a very fine line between perfectly browned butter and burnt butter so from the start to the finish be around your ghee do not wander away trying to multitask! (I've learnt my lesson very well!!!!)

Mango - Pista Kulfi

This is a special post as my blog completed 1 year a few months  several months ago, and what was I doing for so long? I went to India for a relaxing 2 month vacation! I had a great holiday. Attended 2 weddings

My adorable nephew turned one, and I HAD to bake a cake and decorated with homemade fondant,

Had a bakers night out with my dear friend Mads

Mads & I made 50 cupcake toppers and the main cake in the time we had left from a lot of chitchat and fun!

Went to my native village and had an awesome time!,

Went to Coonoor stayed with M's cousin and his family and also re-lived some wonderful memories from my childhood,

Left: The house where my aunt lived for some 20 years before she moved , Right bottom:  M's cousin's family and our family.

And of course stuffed myself with so much food (made by in-laws & mom  mostly!) I felt like a beached walrus most of the times!

Sorry no pictures here!  All the food was eaten very promptly...

 It is better late than never. A special occasion deserves a special treat and I can't possibly think of anything more apt than mango! It is summer here in the US spring in Australia and some other parts of the world  * feeling extremely sheepish!*. In India Mangoes start making their appearance from early March. Though those are very sour and not the best variety, its just the calm before the storm. The only thing (not really the only thing!) I miss about India is the sea of golden-yellow, during summers. The only reason I used to look forward the the horrible, sweaty and stuffy summers in Chennai was the mangoes.  Heaven!!!! Truly the king of fruits. Though we get tinned mango puree all through year here, I still prefer the countless varieties of mangoes we get in India. Coincidentally the area where my native place is, is called the Mango City. The major supply of mangoes for Tamil Nadu comes from this region. As you can imagine, the wonderful two month summer vacations consisted of abundant supply of magoes from our farms. Apart from mangoes, unlimited supply of coconut water and the world's most awesome organic milk straight from the cow.(My granddad has a mini cow shed right across our house). Sigh! Such were my childhood vacations. Well, as you might have guessed already, my brother hated mangoes and their smell. If it were upto me I would use mangoes instead of perfume, body wash, pillow, mattress etc. He didn't like mangoes, that's his loss and my gain. I did not have to share any.

  Recently for a get together with a some friends I decided to make mango kulfi, I had a tin of mango and a lot of pistachios sitting in my pantry. Also, because I got a set of kulfi moulds along with a funky stand. Ever since I got back from India I have been wanting to make it and with the weather being so terrible right now... seems like the perfect time to cool off with mango kulfi + I have been drooling at my very dear friend DK's Mango kulfi since the day she posted it. I made some changes with an addition of a surprise ingredient. This was a super simple recipe and the recipe contains ingredients that are there in you kitchen mostly.

P.S - Will sell husband for mangoes!

Recipe Adapted from ChefInYou
( I doubled the recipe, since it had to serve 10-12 people)

Ingredients:
5 cups Whole milk
1/2 cup Milk powder
1 cup Condensed milk + more to eat of the tin!
1/2 cup Sugar ( you can reduce the quantity if you like it less sweeter)
2 slices Bread, cut into small pieces &  crumbs removed
2 cups Mango puree
Pistachios, skinned and chopped

• In a heavy bottomed pan heat the milk. Boil it on low heat so it reduces a bit.
• In a wide bowl place the cut bread pieces. Add enough milk to soak the bread pieces. 
• Process the soaked bread in a blender.
• Once the milk has thickened a bit, add the milk powder, condensed milk,the processed bread and sugar. Give it a mild boil so it all comes together. Take off heat and set aside
• Allow it to cool to room temperature.
• Add the mango puree and mix it together.
• Add the Pistachios and mix well so it spreads evenly.
• Pour into moulds. and freeze overnight. Set it on the counter for 5 minutes before serving.

Since I had only 6 moulds. I filled 6 moulds and the rest I poured into a 8x8 Inch square pan. That made it easy for every one to make a serving size of their choice. Everyone loved the kulfi so much that every one had a second serving. I have made DK's original recipe before and the addition of the bread definitely helped the texture of the kulfi. It was much softer to bite into. And I loved the addtion of pistachios, it was a lovely contrast and pistachios reminded me of the traditional kesar-pista kulfi.