Nattuvadumai paal or Indian Almond Milk
A warm, soothing and richly flavored milk made from Indian country almonds, turmeric and spices, as an alternative to regular almonds--these are from the Terminalia Catappa tree that grows everywhere in coastal regions and leaves a far smaller ecological footprint than regular almonds.
Ingredients
- 15-20 Indian almonds or sea almonds
- 1 teaspoon gaund or gum arabica
- 1 teaspoon of ghee (to fry the gaund; see notes for vegan options)
- 2 green cardamom pods
- 4 black peppercorns
- 2 thippili or long pepper
- ½ litre whole fat milk (see notes for vegan options)
- ¼ cup sugar, or to taste
- ¼ teaspoon turmeric
- A generous pinch of nutmeg, freshly grated
- A few strands of saffron, optional
Instructions
- Soak the Indian almonds for several hours and up to overnight. Add a little water and blend them to a fine paste. Set aside.
- In a small tempering pan, heat the ghee (or oil) and when it is smoking or near-smoking, drop in the gaund. It will puff and whiten like popcorn. Remove it with a slotted spoon and transfer to a mortar or where it can be crushed into a powder with a stone. Set aside.
- Peel the cardamom and extract the seeds. Crush those along with the peppercorns and thippili together into a semi-fine powder. Set aside.
- Boil the milk (or heat it until it’s steaming). Add about a cup of milk to the Indian almond paste and then pour that back into the milk. Whisk well to combine. Reduce the flame to medium-low.
- Add the sugar, mix to dissolve.
- Simmer very gently on low heat for just a minute or so until the milk thickens just slightly. Drop in the saffron strands, if using. Now whisk in the turmeric, pepper-thippili powder, powdered gaund and nutmeg powder—and it’s done.
- To foam it up, pour it from saucepan to saucepan, increasing the height of the milk stream as much as you can each time. Transfer to glasses or cups in the final pour and serve warm-hot.
Notes
- You can use a half-fat milk for this, but not skim—some fats are needed to dissolve the turmeric and draw out what’s valuable in the pepper.
- To make this recipe vegan, substitute the ghee with any mild-flavored oil and use freshly extracted coconut milk instead of regular cow’s milk. Since coconut milk will break with too vigorous heating, whisk a little of it into the almond paste with a little water, and heat this thoroughly. Then take it off the flame and whisk in the remaining coconut milk and proceed with the recipe as written.