Curries and Spices: Elaneer Payasam

The guest post section on Curries and Spices is back! And this time, it is my dear friend A, who is contributing a lip-smacking dessert!

A and I are ex-colleagues, forever-good-friends, who share so many interests. She is such sweet girl, whom I bank on for anything. Ask her for a diet regime, she mails the whole plan in a few minutes. Ask her for a recipe, she sends it with the pic in hours!! We share many many fond memories, starting from our training days at Pollachi. And we both are die-hard fans of the IPL team, Chennai Super Kings; so much hardcore that noone dares to talk bad about CSK in front of us ;) Hehehe :)

So without much yada-yada, here comes the A's special dessert for all of us, in her words.

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‘Elaneer Payasam? Really?’ I asked, when my colleagues and I went out to lunch at Ente Keralam a couple of weeks ago. To be honest I hadn’t known that such a simple yet delicious dish even existed.
To my own surprise, when I had a spoon of it from my colleague's cup, I knew I had to master this one.
So I went recipe hunting. On the internet. And found quite a few bloggers write about the goodness of Elaneer Payasam. (and said to myself: "Woman there's no point in calling yourself a foodie when you didn't notice this one ALL THIS WHILE.)

Made from just 5 ingredients, you know you just cannot go wrong on this payasam when you read the recipe and go about cooking it.
I chose Lavanya Donthamshetty's recipe, as it was the simplest (and modified it a bit)

Let me get straight to the recipe.

Elaneer Payasam

You'll need:
1 litre of milk (full fat)
3/4 cups of sugar
1 cup coconut milk (extract it yourself)
1 and a half cups of tender coconut water
about 2 cups of tender coconut pulp, roughly torn apart by a spoon or hand

3 Cardamom pods to garnish (optional)

Method:
Start by boiling the milk and then letting it simmer till it reduces to about 750 ml.
At that stage it starts turning a little ivory-ish and thick.
Add sugar and stir for another 5 minutes.
Now the milk is starting to look almost yellow.
Add coconut milk and cardamom, and stir for about 30 seconds.
Turn off heat, and stir well for about a minute until you think the coconut milk is fully combined into the rest of the broth (of milk and sugar).
Now add the tender coconut water and the roughly cut pulp and stir for about 30 seconds.
Let it cool down, and then refrigerate it.
After about 4 hours, pull it out, and impress everyone (and yourself). I served this to my family and WOW- my mum, who's the best critic actually appreciated me. Try it out- its a clear winner!

Alternatively, you can use 150 ml condensed milk. If you do that, use only 750 ml initially to boil.
Also, you may add saffron strands if you like saffron flavor.
I've used chunks of tender coconut pulp because I like biting into larger chunks, but you may want to dice the pulp or cut it up into smaller bits.

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Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. See you all soon with another interesting recipe!