How to Make Shrikhand

Today we're making Shrikhand, which is a strained yogurt dessert. This recipe is adapted from the book Indian by Parragon Publishing in the UK. Shrikhand is super easy to make and yummy, which is why I chose it for the first recipe.

Ingredients:

An entire 32 oz container of WHOLE MILK yogurt (do not use nonfat or 2%!).
2 TB milk
1/4 ts saffron threads
heaping 1/4 ts ground cardamom
heaping 1/4 cup confectioner's sugar




Steps:

1. STRAIN THE YOGURT.

Dump the yogurt from the container into a clean cotton dishcloth washed without fabric softeners (because you don't want your yogurt to taste like Bounce). Put the empty yogurt container back into the fridge. Suspend the dishcloth with yogurt over a bowl in the sink. I use clothespins to hold it to the faucet. Do this right before you go to bed and let it drain overnight. It needs to hang there for at least six hours. The watery liquid that drains out of the yogurt is called whey. When you get up in the morning, take the dishcloth with the strained yogurt carefully off the faucet (don't drop it back into the whey!). Scrape the yogurt out of the dishcloth back into the yogurt container. The yogurt should have a soft, cream cheese-like consistency. It will be about half the volume of what it was in its unstrained form. If it's still liquidy and sticking to the towel, that means you were impatient and didn't let it drain long enough. Listen to your sissy! She knows whereof she speaks. Save the whey that drained into the bowl in another container and put it in the fridge. Tomorrow we'll make whey biscuits with it.

The bowl before and after the yogurt has been strained:



The strained yogurt and the whey:



2. ADD THE SPICES

Take 1/4 teaspoon of the saffron and gently roast it over low heat for about a minute in a small, dry pan, until it releases its aroma. Be careful not to burn it. As soon as it's roasted, add 2 tablespoons of milk to the pan and heat it for about 45 seconds until bubbles start to form around the edge. Turn off the heat and dump the milk-saffron mixture into the container with the yogurt. Also add to the container a heaping 1/4 teaspoon of cardamom (your sissy will give you a little in a baggie if you want, since it's expensive to buy just for one recipe) and a heaping 1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar. Mix it up with a spoon. The mixture will be thick and will turn a pale yellow from the spices. Cover the container, put it into the fridge and let it chill before you eat it. Note that shrikhand is super rich and you don't need to eat as much of it as you do with unstrained yogurt. It's almost like ice cream. Yum!

Images: Saffron in the pan, mixed yogurt.