Thandai

Holi is the Indian festival of colours, marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring. It is the favourite festival of the year for kids across large parts of India - they play around throwing water and coloured powder on each other.

It is also the time (as any other time of the year) for lots of special recipes - and moms are on overdrive the few days before Holi.

The temperatures are on the rise, and the ideal drink of the season is something which can be drunk cool - but has enough "hot" ingredients in case the weather remains inclement. This ideal mix is the Thandai - the very name signifies "cool".

Thandai can be drunk either fresh, or as a syrup which one can mix any time with milk - this is the syrup variant, which has the advantage that it can be stored for a couple of weeks upto a couple of months (highly unlikely that you actually reach the couple of months stage, as it is also very yummy!)

Special thanks to my mother-in-law for this very special recipe and to all of you out there - a very happy Holi!

Ingredients 


1/4 cup - almonds, soaked overnight


to be soaked together overnight

1 tbsp heaped - poppy seeds, khuskhus
1 tbsp heaped - dried melon seeds, magaj

to be ground together and soaked overnight in 1/4 th cup water

1/2 tbsp - green cardamom
1/2 tbsp - whole black pepper

1 tbsp - fennel seeds, saunf


2 cups - sugar
2 cups - muscovado sugar( since I ran out of sugar so I used muscovado)
1 1/4 cup - water 
2 tbsp - rose petal spread, gulkand
25-30 strands - saffron
1 tsp - rose water, gulabjal
a generous pinch of cardamom powder
a generous pinch of pepper powder


Method 

1. Blanch the almonds. Grind together the blanched almonds, poppy seeds and melon seeds using very little water. Sieve/press through a muslin cloth and extract all the liquid and keep aside. ( you can use the residue in any gravy)
2. Add the 2 tbsp of rose petal spread to the ground cardamom-pepper-fennel mixture and mix well. Sieve/press through a muslin cloth and extract all the liquid and keep aside. Discard the residue.
3. Mix both the extracted liquids and keep aside. ( I got approx 1 cup of extracted liquid)
4. Add the 4 cups of sugar and 1 1/4th cup of water in a deep sauce pan and cook until the sugar dissolves. Bring to boil and simmer for a couple of minutes. Remove from the heat and let it cool for a minute and then add the extracted liquid to it.
5. Retransfer to the heat and boil on a high flame for a minute and then further simmer for 5-7 minutes, stirring continously. (be careful at this stage as it may splutter) 
6. Remove from the heat and cool till warm and then add the saffron strands, cardamom powder, pepper powder and rose water and mix well.
7. If sugar crystals are formed in the thandai while cooling down, add 1/2 - 3/4 cup of boiling water and mix well. 
8. When the thandai completely cools down and has no sugar crystals then transfer to a sterilised bottle.

Add 2 tsp of thandai syrup in a cup of  milk and mix well. Garnish with almonds and pistachio and serve chilled. 

Enjoy!