Vermicelli pudding
By Tisa Jacob
Thin vermicelli noodles and tapioca pearls make this sweetened milk mixture unbearably delicious.
- Average
- Average budget
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp tapioca pearls
- 2 tbsp water
- 2 tbsp oil or ghee
- 2 tbsp cashews
- 3/4 cup semiya or thin vermicelli
- 3 cups milk
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 crushed cardamom(optional)
Preparation
Step 1
Soak tapioca pearls in 2 tbsp water for 10 minutes.
In the meantime, add ghee to a skillet over medium, stir in cashews and vermicelli strands.
Allow contents to brown, including vermicelli strands. Take off heat and set aside.
In a separate deep wide set pan/dutch oven, add milk. Take heat to medium -high
Drain and rinse the tapioca pearls to get rid of any stickiness or starch. Add this along with sugar and cardamom to the milk.
Keeping heat on medium, simmer contents, stirring at regular intervals, until pearls get semitranslucent about 10 -15 minutes.
Add vermicelli and cashews at this point.
Bring to boil, then lower heat to simmer, occasionally stirring until vermicelli is soft and clear, an additional 12-15 minutes. By this time the tapioca pearls would be clear and the milk considerably thickened,
Serve hot or cool and refrigerate for 1-3 hours to serve chilled.
Although it's dreamy to use whole milk here, I've used 2%, and on most other occasions, skim.
You can drop the sugar amount to the level you'd like, though I'd not go lower than 1/4 of a cup, which would just barely be in the mildly sweet range.
Indian groceries have readymade roasted vermicelli in which case you could altogether skip the step of browning, save for the cashews. Just add it straight to the milk.
These specialized groceries would also be where you'd find tapioca pearls, known as sago palm pearls. These are of the small granule variety and need to be presoaked, should not be confused with the instant.
Besides cashews, roasted raisins/dates are also added into payasam. You can pick/ choose/forgo as you please.