Basundhi(Paneer kheer) - I call it heaven!

Ever since Sujatha of Spicykhazana posted paneer kheer recipe, I have been dreaming about it. I call this dessert-Basundhi. I usually make it by stirring whole milk and sugar for atleast an hour. But this recipe was much easier and consumed less time than the original method.
Thanks to Sujatha! I love Basundhi from hotel-Saravana bhavan. It tastes out of the world. My mom makes awesome Basundhi too.

I modified the recipe to suit my taste.

Sending this to Aparna's one year of blogging celebrations and Srilekha's EFM Sweets.

Ingredients:

Half and half(full fat milk)-1.5 cups

Evaporated milk-1.5 cups

Grated paneer-1 cup

Sugar-1/4 cup(or according to your taste)

Cardamom- 1/4 tsp

Saffron- a few strands

Method:

Boil half and half. When it raises, lower the heat, add evaporated milk. Let the mixture continue to cook on low flame for 15 minutes(stir every 2 minutes). Add paneer, sugar, saffron and cardamom now. Mix well and continue heating on medium low flame stirring frequently until the mixture becomes very thick(time varies from 10-20 minutes). The mixture would have reduced by 1/2 in volume now. It will look semi solid. After refrigerating, it will become even more thick. Garnish with nuts and seve cold.

Note:1. Use a non stick pan.

2. Evaporated milk and Sugar can be replaced by condensed milk. I like to add evaporated milk because I can control the amount of sugar.

3. Amount of milk and evaporated milk can be reduced to 1 cup each to get the desired basundhi consistency in lesser time. Quantity of paneer may be increased from 1 cup to 1.5 cups. How about that? I am going to try this proportion next time.

Do you feel all clogged up?

Is the drain in your shower slow?

Do you have a toilet that clogs a lot?

Do you have to not use your garbage disposal because it always clogs?

All of these are indications of a potential problem with your drain system and can be investigated and (usually) fixed fairly easily.

Everything that drains in your house drains – through something called a p-trap – into your house sewer system. The pipe where it starts is usually the smallest and, as that pipe joins to other pipes, they get bigger. The pipe that leaves your house is usually 3” or 4” pipe!

The drain for your kitchen sink and bathroom sinks typically connect with a 1-1/2” pipe, your tub or shower are typically 2” and your toilet is either 3” or 4”.

So, if the pipes are that big, how do you get a clog? Good question!

With most sinks, the clogs are going to be in the p-trap. This is underneath the sink and junk can settle into it and not get flushed down the drain. If enough junk gets settled into here, a clog will form and your sink will back up.
With a tub or shower, the biggest culprit is hair and soap scum. Hair catches on everything and the soap scum glues it together. Over time, these can form a nasty clog and really make your drain slow down.
With a toilet, the biggest problem is toilet paper. The p-trap for a toilet is part of the toilet. When you flush some solid waste and too much toilet paper, this is too much bulk to make it through the p-trap. Bingo, a clog! The most important thing?

DON”T FLUSH A SECOND TIME!!!!!!

Toilets are designed to hold all the water in the tank and not overflow. If you flush a second time, then the water goes all over the floor.

One note on toilets: don’t use them to flush things that you don’t want. Everything, it seems, gets stuck in a toilet. I’ve had toy cars, eyeliner pencils, bars of soap and GI Joe’s get stuck in toilets. In all cases, except the GI Joe, it was necessary to REPLACE the toilet! We could not get them out! Keep the lids down and your kids away!

Most of the time a clog in a sink or toilet can be cleared with a plunger. When this won’t work, that’s when you have to call me. Plumbers have machines call “snakes” that feed a stiff wire – ¼” – ¾” thick – down the pipe and rotate it as it goes. These wires (called "cabes" or "rods") have blades on the ends of them that help the snake dig. This will usually dig through a clog and break it up in the process. Then the weight of the water washes it away. Sometimes this process involves more than one size machine from more than one access point.

The thing to remember is that your drain system is designed to wash away liquid waste for the most part. The only place that is designed to handle solid waste is your toilet and it is designed to handle it with a lot of water! The larger your liquid to solid ratio, the better!

Just a note about garbage disposals – they are NOT designed for every piece of food you don’t eat or for when you are cleaning out your refrigerator! Here are the rules for using a garbage disposal:

1) Turn the disposal on first, before you put any food in!
2) The water MUST be running before you put any food into the disposal.

Note: it is perfectly fine to run the disposal without water; it will not hurt the disposal. The reason for the water is to rinse away the food, not to cool or protect the disposal.

3) Do not run the disposal when the sink is full of water. This will cause the pipes under the
sink to vibrate a lot and is very bad.
4) Put small amount of food into the disposal, not big hunks. Put the equivalent of about 2
mouthfuls in!
5) Let the food be ground up and washed away before putting in more food,
6) When you are finished, wait a few seconds after the disposal stops making grinding noises
before turning it off
7) Leave the water running for at least 5 seconds after the disposal is off.

If you have any plumbing problems, you can always visit our website and set up an appointment for us to come out and fix it. If you want to remodel, add a reverse osmosis system or softener, replace a leaking faucet or for any other plumbing issue.

Are you following the football season? There have been some interesting games so far! I am a huge Steelers and Patriots fan, but I love football in general. Just some of my thoughts on the season so far...

... who would have thought that the Titans would be undefeated after 10 weeks!

... It looks like Bill Parcells has made a difference in Miami!

... Detroit is off to another dismal start. The question is, is it more likely that Detroit will go 0 and 16 or that Tennessee will go 16 and 0?

... Mike Singletary needs to start thinking like a head coach and not a player. He really threw his Offensive Coordinator under the bus!

... Looks like Bret Favre could take the local Pop Warner team and make contenders out of them; not that I am saying the Jets are bad, it's just that Bret is so good!

Any comments!

Pumpkin Cream Puffs

At this time of year you will see many pumpkins appear everywhere in the markets. I bought half and made few pumpkin cheese bread but before that let me share with you the pumpkin cream puffs made by leftover pumpkins from the bread recipe. I mixed some mashed pumpkin with custard and whipped cream together to produce the fillings. It's something different and tasty too!

Recipe:
For the Puff: 70g plain flour/3 beaten eggs/100g water/60g unsalted butter/Pinch of sugar and salt

For the custard: 3 egg yolks/200ml milk/60g sugar/20g plain flour/10g unsalted butter/1 tsp vanilla extract/120g pumpkin puree/150 ml whipping cream/30g chocolate

How I made it:

1. For the puff, boil the water, butter and pinch of sugar and salt in a cooking pan until its bubbly. Off the heat, add in all the plain flour and mix with a wooden spoon until well combine and become a smooth dough.
2. Add half of the beaten eggs and mix (this stage is a bit hard work but please patient and keep stirring until the egg mix into the dough.)
3. Once the eggs completely mix with the dough, you will find it quite dry and hardly to mix. Add the beaten eggs little by little into the dough and continue mixing. You might not finish using the beaten eggs. You will need to have a smooth and silky consistency of the mixture. When you spoon up the mixture, it should drop back to the pan very slowly. The mixture should not too dry or too wet.
4. Once you get the right consistency of mixture, transfer it into a piping bag and pipe out about 20 dollops of mixture on a baking tray with baking paper.
5. Dip your fingers with some water and gently touch the top of the mixture. This is to prevent it over burning while it's baking in the oven. Then spray some water on the mixture surface. (Not too much)
6. Bake at 200'C preheated oven for 15 minutes until it puff up then turn the temperature to 170'C and bake for another 15 minutes.
7. Transfer the puff on a wire rack to cool down.
8. For the custard, boil the milk with sugar until sugar dissolve but not boiling. Meanwhile, mix the egg yolks and flour a thick paste but no lumps. Add two tablespoon of milk if you find it too dry to mix.
9. Pour the dissolve warm sugar milk into the egg yolks mixture, pour little by little and mix with a hand whisk until everything combine. Then, pour back the mixture into the cooking pan. Cook in very low heat and keep stirring until it thicken.
10. Once the mixture thicken, remove from the heat and keep stirring until the heat slightly cool down but slightly warm. Then add in the butter and vanilla extract. Continue stirring until well combine.
11. Transfer the custard into a plate and cover with cling film. Make sure the cling film touch on the mixture, this is to prevent it from skin forming on its surface.
12. When the custard completely cool down, mix in the mashed pumpkins until well combine. Whip the cream until thicken and fold into the pumpkin custard.
13. Transfer the pumpkin custard into a pipping bag and squeeze into the puffs.
14. Dip the pumpkin cream puff with some melted chocolate and chill in the fridge until cool to serve.

This is something very fun which I think it helps relating people who has the same interest with. The rules for tagging is link to my blog (tagger) on your blog. Give seven facts about yourself then tag another seven bloggers by leaving a comment on their blogs and letting them know they were tagged and listing them (and their blogs) on your blog. Here is how I followed:

• I bake madly in the kitchen. My hand feel itchy if I didn't touch my kitchen stuffs for some time.
• I spend lots of time in research of baking from the internet, books or friends. I've not attended any baking classes or courses yet. But looking forward to attend one day.
• I like to walk, I can walk many miles. But the land I'm living right now just too small and too hot for me to walk.
• I hate packing but I've got to do it as I'm moving country to country with my other half.
• I hardly understand myself until I've married because I wasted lots of time investing on my study then finally I realize what I really interested which was not relating to my study.
• I afraid of leaving. Leaving someone is just like a world war.
• Jesus is my best friend, only Him can give me the peace of mind.

7 bloggers that I'm passing on:

1. Passionate About Baking
2. Happy Home Baking
3. Happy Flour
4. Baking on Cloud 9
5. My Kitchen
6. Fresh from the Oven
7. Afternoon Tea