Badam ka Sharbat

Through Ramzan the lanes around Charminar stay open past midnight, and every third shop has a tall steel drum on the counter with a slab of ice floating in it and a ladle hooked over the rim. What comes into the glass is pale ivory, thick enough to cling to the sides for a second before it slides back down, and so cold the glass fogs while you are still paying. Cardamom reaches you first, in the breath before the sip. Then the almond, which stays right through, and a faint saffron colour you only notice if you tilt the glass to the light.

The sweetener in a badam sharbat has to vanish. Almond is a soft, fatty, low flavour — it is easy to bury under anything with a personality of its own. Jaggery would colour the drink and bring its own smoky note; white sugar tips it towards a milkshake. Mishri does neither. The concentrate is cooked, so the crushed crystals go in hot and are gone in under a minute of stirring, leaving a clean sweetness that keeps the almond and the cardamom at the front. Our Organic Dhaga Mishri is crystallised on cotton threads over eight to ten days, which is where the thread through the crystal comes from.

Grit is the only real way to spoil this. Almonds must be ground to a paste with no texture left in it at all, and a domestic mixer will lie to you — it looks smooth in the jar and feels sandy on the tongue. Blend once, scrape the sides down, blend again, then rub a little between your finger and thumb. If you can feel anything, blend a third time or pass the paste through a muslin cloth before it goes in the pan.

How to make it

1. Drain the soaked almonds and squeeze off the skins — they slip off between finger and thumb. Drain the melon seeds too.
2. Put the almonds, melon seeds, saffron and 1 cup of the water into a mixer. Blend to a paste, scrape the sides down, and blend again for another minute until it is completely smooth. Rub a little between your fingers to check for grit.
3. Pour the paste into a heavy pan with the remaining 2 cups water. Bring to a gentle boil, then lower the flame.
4. Simmer for 12 to 15 minutes, stirring often and scraping the base so it does not catch. It will thicken to about the consistency of thin cream and turn a shade paler.
5. Add the crushed mishri and the cardamom powder. Stir for a minute until it dissolves, then cook for 5 minutes more.
6. Switch off and let it cool completely, uncovered. It thickens further as it cools.
7. Pour into a clean glass bottle and refrigerate. It keeps 7 days in the fridge and up to 3 months frozen.
8. To serve, spoon 4 to 5 tbsp of the concentrate into a tall glass. Add a splash of chilled milk and stir it loose, then fill up with the rest of the milk, add ice and stir well.
9. Scatter slivered pistachios on top and serve immediately, while it is still fogging the glass.

Tips

• Peel the almonds. The skins turn the sharbat greyish-brown and leave a bitter edge. Eight hours of soaking makes them slip off easily.
• Melon seeds do the thickening. Two spoons of magaz give the drink that clinging body without any cream or condensed milk. Leave them out and it will be thinner but still good.
• Stir the pan. Almond paste catches at the bottom fast and a burnt base flavours the whole batch. Keep the flame low and the spoon moving.
• Warm version for winter. Stir the same concentrate into hot milk instead of cold. Add the mishri crushed and fresh at that point if you like it sweeter, it dissolves in seconds in hot milk.
• Crush the mishri fresh. Pull out the cotton thread, put the crystals in a steel katori and press with the base of another. It goes into hot liquid far faster than whole crystals.