One of the biggest reasons I love cooking is trying new things.  Although I often make the same things for dinner every week (wedge salads, omelets, sandwiches, etc), I always look forward to trying a new recipe, and even more, cooking with an ingredient I’ve never used before.

When Iris left a few weeks ago she gave me a small gift of some exotic spices and one of them was whole cardamom pods. I knew of the flavor and its Middle Eastern popularity, but I had honestly never seen or tasted them directly.  They’re derivatives of ginger and have that same pungent, robust flavor, and I couldn’t wait to use them.  And then because fate loves to step in, when I logged onto Epicurious a few days ago, this recipe greeted me on the homepage.

Also adding to the “new ingredient” category, it uses arrowroot powder, a thickener similar to cornstarch, which creates an extremely smooth, “silky” pudding.  The whole thing came together in less than 15 minutes and just needs some chill time.  The result is an extremely fragrant, luscious dish with a rich, cooling aftertaste.  In my perfect world this would follow a spicy curry dish, but that’ll be next time.

Cardamom Milk Pudding (also known as muhallebi)

Based on the recipe from Epicurious.com

I looked at some variations on this dish online and found many recipes adding vanilla, orange extract and other flavorings, and I decided to do the same.  I wanted to put in half a split vanilla bean but realized I was out when I went to my spices.  So instead I added half a teaspoon of really good pure extract, and it only adds to the fragrant flavor of the dish.  Also, I rarely harp on using organic ingredients because I know budgets are tight for everyone out there, but seriously, spend the extra couple bucks and get organic whole milk for this – it’s the entire basis of the dish and you want the freshest, cleanest tasting milk you can get. Even better, if your grocery store is awesome enough to carry local farm milk in the glass bottles, snatch that up.

Ingredients

• 3 ½ cups organic whole milk
• 1 tablespoon green cardamom pods, slightly crushed
• 1/3 cup arrowroot powder
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract or ½ vanilla bean, split lengthwise
• 2 tablespoons hulled, unsalted pistachios, roughly chopped
• pinch of kosher salt

Directions

1.) In a large saucepan, bring the milk, crushed cardamom pods, vanilla (extract or bean) and salt to a slow boil, stirring often to prevent scalding.  Once boiling, remove from the heat and cover, then let stand 5 minutes.

2.) While the milk stands, whisk the sugar and arrowroot powder together in a large mixing bowl.  When it’s time, slowly pour in the milk mixture and whisk everything together.  Once mixed, return to the saucepan and bring back up to a simmer, stirring constantly.  Once the pudding has thickened (this happens pretty quick, about 90 seconds for me), strain through a fine-mesh sieve or strainer into a bowl, and discard the cardamom pods.

3.) Cover the surface of the pudding with wax paper (to prevent a skin from forming while it refrigerates) and chill at least 5 hours, until extremely cold.

4.) Serve sprinkled with chopped pistachios.

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