Holi special Thandai

Whenever we hear about Thandai we connect to the festivals like holi or mahashivratri. A chilled  milk based drink with strong flavours of almonds, fennel seeds, poppy seeds, black pepper. Awesome in taste and it cools you down. This holi I decided to make thandai at home only and it was liked by all. As the original way of making thandai don't mention to reduce the milk , however I did it as ii wanted that natural yellowish colour of the milk that we get once the mil gets reduces and thickens after simmering for a long time. You can avoid this step of reducing the milk as its quite time consuming. I did use few strands of kesar/saffron for the aroma and colour too.

Ingredients:

Milk: 1 & 1/2 ltr full fat milk
Sugar: 5-6 tbsp. (you can increase/decrease the quantity as per your taste bud)
Almond: 10-12 numbers
Cashew nuts: 7-8 numbers
Poppy seeds: 2 tsp
Fennel seeds - grounded into powder : 2 tsp
Crushed and powdered black pepper: take 6-7 numbers of black pepper
Cardamom powder: 1 tsp
Saffron/kesar: few strands - 7 or 8
Pistachios & few more saffron strands: for garnishing



Method:

Soak the almonds, cashew nuts, poppy seeds in water for about an hour or so.

Boil the milk in heavy bottomed pan. After the first boil , add the sugar. Take out 2-3 tbsp. of hot milk in a small bowl and soak the saffron strands.
Let the milk simmer till the it reduces to half by continuously checking and stirring.

In the mean while make a smooth paste out of the soaked almonds, cashew nuts, poppy seeds.

Once the milk starts reducing add the above paste and mix well. Let it simmer for some 10-12 minutes. Finally add the powdered black pepper, powdered fennel seeds and cardamom powder. Pour the saffron soaked along with the milk. Give it a nice mix. After a minute or two put the flame off.

Now you can serve it in two ways , either you transfer the thandai to glasses directly , keep it in refrigerator to chill and then serve OR if you want you can strain the mixture first through a strainer , discard the residue, transfer the thandai to glasses, make it chill and serve. Garnish with pistachios and saffron before serving.