Rose Paayasam
Paayasam is one of the main desserts in any traditional South Indian festival/special occasion menu. No festival lunch/dinner is complete without a paayasam towards the end of the meal. Paayasam in tamil refers to a rice/broken wheat/vermicelli (to name a few) based dessert item cooked in milk/coconut milk. It is sweetened with jaggery or sugar and flavoured with cardamom/saffron/ nutmeg etc.
Fresh or dried rose petals have lot of health benefits and calming properties. Combined with the natural exotic fragrance, this is one of my favourite flavours in many desserts.
The other day I visited the local Indian store to get some groceries. When I saw fresh, fragrant roses in a basket, I couldn’t control myself and bought loads, without having any idea how to use it all. Well, this is what came out of it in the end – Paal (milk) Paayasam enriched with rose. Enjoy!
Ingredients
Fresh Rose petals – 1 cup + few for garnish
Basmati Rice – 1/4 cup
Almond meal (see note 7 for alternatives) – 3 tbsp
Sugar – 3/4 cup
Ghee or unsalted butter – 1/2 tsp
Full cream milk – 600 ml
Rose essence – 1 tsp
Water – 200 ml
Slivered pistachio/almonds – 2 tbsp
Yield
serves 5
Prep time
20 mins
Cook time
40 mins
Method
1) Wash the basmati rice and rose petals separately. Take both in a bowl, add 200 ml of milk and all the water. Soak this for 20 mins.
2) Heat a heavy bottomed or nonstick pan and add the ghee/butter. Now add the rice-rose petals-milk mixture to the pan and bring it to a boil on medium heat.
3) Continue to boil the rice on medium heat, stirring constantly (to avoid the milk sticking to the bottom of the pan). Add the remaining milk in batches to enable the rice to cook fully until soft and mushy. The rose petals will also get cooked along with the rice.
4) Once the rice is cooked to a mushy consistency, add sugar and mix. The Rose Paayasam will become diluted as the sugar melts, but continue stirring and boil for 5 to 8 mins more, until it thickens.
5) Now add the almond meal, slivered nuts and rose essence. Mix. Switch off the heat. Allow it to cool completely and come to room temperature. Refrigerate.
6) Just before serving, garnish the Rose Paayasam with fresh rose petals and pistachios. Serve chilled.
Notes
- Use a heavy bottomed or nonstick pan only. Otherwise there is a chance (in spite of continuous stirring) the paayasam might stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.
- Heat has to be constantly at medium. Don’t increase the heat at any stage.
- Paayasam tastes great with full cream milk but feel free to use other kinds of milk – almond milk and rice milk would be most suited. You will lose out on the richness that Paayaam is famous for, but it’ll still taste great!
- The rose petals will change colour as it cooks, but will give out a nice aroma to the Rose Paayasam.
- Add milk in batches, because if you add the entire milk in the beginning, it will start to boil and splash and make your cooking area dirty and might also spurt hot boiling milk on your hand. So to avoid this, it is better to add milk in batches as it gets cooked.
- Always add sugar only after the rice cooks completely, because once you add sugar the rice will not cook further to a mashy consistency (the mashy consistency is what you want for any paayasam!).
- Ground walnut/cashew nut/pecans are other alternatives for almond meal. If you store nuts in the refrigerator, then bring the nuts to room temperature before grinding.
- Adding almond meal gives extra richness to this paayasam. If you want to skip this, then it’s fine too. The final taste of the paayasam will/should not change drastically.
- As the main ingredient of this paayasam is rose petals and rose flavour, no other flavouring agent is added. Addition of any other flavour (cardamom, saffron etc) will not suit this recipe. The aroma of rose should be dominant.
- Keep the fresh rose petals, reserved for garnishing, in a bowl of ice cold water until you use it so the petals don’t wilt.
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