Panchamrit

Before the aarti begins, someone sets a small brass bowl on the puja chowki and mixes five things in it with a spoon — milk, curd, ghee, honey and mishri — then drops in a few tulsi leaves picked from the pot by the door. It is thin and pale and faintly grainy until the mishri goes, and it smells mostly of warm ghee and crushed tulsi. Afterwards it comes round the room in the same brass bowl with one small spoon, a spoonful each into cupped palms. It is cool, sweet with a soft sour edge behind it from the curd, and a tulsi leaf usually comes with it and sticks to the back of the spoon.

Mishri is the traditional fifth ingredient and it works precisely because it disappears. Milk and curd are both delicate, honey is already assertive, and ghee brings its own richness — add anything with a flavour of its own and it pushes in front of all three. Jaggery, with its molasses note, would take over the bowl completely. Our Organic Dhaga Mishri is grown on cotton thread over eight to ten days and is nothing but crystallised cane, so when it goes it leaves sweetness and no trace of itself. What you taste is the curd, the ghee and the tulsi.

Powder the mishri properly. This mixture is never heated, and cold curd will not take whole crystals — they sink to the bottom, the first spoons come out flat and the last ones come out gritty. Crush it between two steel katoris or in a mortar until it is as fine as sooji, then stir it into the curd for a full minute before anything else goes in. Rub a drop between your fingers; if it is smooth, you are done.

How to make it

1. Pull the cotton threads out of the mishri and crush the crystals between two steel katoris, or in a mortar, until the powder is as fine as sooji. Rub a little between your fingers to check.
2. Whisk the curd in a clean brass or steel bowl until it is completely smooth with no lumps, about 30 seconds.
3. Add the powdered mishri to the curd and stir steadily for a full minute, until you cannot feel any grain against the bottom of the bowl.
4. Pour in the chilled milk and mix well. The bowl should look pale and slightly thick, like thin cream.
5. Add the honey and the melted ghee and stir them through. The ghee will sit in tiny golden beads on the surface, which is how it should look.
6. Wash the tulsi leaves and drop them in whole. Add the saffron strands and the chopped almonds if you are using them.
7. Cover and keep cool until the puja. Stir once before serving and give one small spoon to each person. Panchamrit is made fresh and finished the same day.

Tips

• Powder the mishri. Nothing here is heated, so whole crystals never dissolve. Fine powder plus a minute of stirring is the difference between smooth and gritty.
• Use fresh, thick, sweet curd. Sour curd throws the whole balance off. Curd set the same morning is best.
• Add the ghee last. A teaspoon is plenty. Poured in early it coats the bowl; added at the end it stays in small golden beads on the surface.
• Keep the tulsi whole. Chopped tulsi turns the mixture bitter and green. Whole leaves scent it gently and look right in the bowl.
• Make it fresh. Panchamrit is not stored. Mix it just before the puja and finish it the same day.