A few weeks back, over lunch, while eating kulfi bought from a local sweet shop, my mother told me about this kulfi she had made when my dad was posted at Bidar, almost 27 years back or so. She remembered it as the best kulfi she had eaten or ever made. She said it was every bit creamy and even though she had lost the original recipe, she remembered that she had added whole wheat flour to the mix. She remembered a few other key ingredients as well and I used that as the starting point for a google search of that recipe.
A few link clicks and I stumbled on this site which had a version of kulfi quite similar to what my mother remembers her recipe to be. With a little tweaks, after consulting with my mom, I set out to make homemade saffron pistachio kulfi in the slow cooker.
I know I have posted about Dal Makhani once before on GMT. And while this is more or less the same recipe, it is one that I make in the slow cooker now so I thought a repost of it was necessary. Plus, there are some changes (albeit slight) to the recipe, so thought would just post the revised recipe.
In the previous post I did give a brief introduction to Dal Makhani, but I found this article by a renowned Indian food critic, Vir Sanghvi, which dwells into the origins of Dal Makhani and as Vir Sanghvi’s research points out, the credit to the origins of dal makhani that we eat today can be attributed to Kundan Lal Gujra’s now famous hotel Moti Mahal in Daryaganj area of Delhi.
Another famous version of this dal is the five star hotel ITC’s Dal Bukhara. The Bukhara dal, according to the article, gets its thickness and creaminess from slow cooking. The chefs cook it on a low flame overnight and then, never take it off the fire. My father had told me about this earlier, so I thought of trying to cook it in my faithful crockpot and try to achieve restaurant style dal makhani and I am pretty pleased with the version I ma sharing with you all today.
The previous recipe of dal makhani I posted was a much more quick way of cooking the dal, but once I started cooking it in the slow cooker I have realized that without adding cream you can still achieve the creaminess and thickness of traditional dal makhani by just slow cooking it. Of course, adding cream and butter takes it another level of scrumptious goodness (Kundan Lal’s recipe has one kg of dal, 500 ml of cream and a full kg of butter!), but believe me, for the calorie conscious slow cooking the dal gives it the right amount of viscosity (and that rich taste) without the added fat.
I have finally come to admit to myself that I suck at throwing. I don’t play cricket for the same reason because I literally throw like a girl. I would rather walk the distance and hand you the ball then embarrass myself by throwing it and having it land 100 feet away from you. Yes, I speak from experience.
This realisation strengthened yesterday when we played darts at my friend’s place. It was painstakingly embarrassing, but luckily I had enough drinks in me to not be too bothered about making a fool out of myself. V, on the other hand, was perfect. Maybe it has something to do with all the yoga he does. *Mental note to self- practice yoga to get better at darts.*
A few weeks back, over lunch, while eating kulfi bought from a local sweet shop, my mother told me about this kulfi she had made when my dad was posted at Bidar, almost 27 years back or so. She remembered it as the best kulfi she had eaten or ever made. She said it was every bit creamy and even though she had lost the original recipe, she remembered that she had added whole wheat flour to the mix. She remembered a few other key ingredients as well and I used that as the starting point for a google search of that recipe.
