Ice Cream Falooda

Can I cheat a little? Regular readers of my ex-blog 'Made by Ann' may remember my desire to cook a recipe from a different part of the world every month. Like many plans, that started really well; I cooked a lot of different international recipes. What I failed to do was take good photos and create blog posts. Now, even though I've deleted the old blog (but exported many posts over), I still fancy writing about recipes from across the globe. My rambling has a point; I've now made Falooda, a childhood favourite but I realise that it is also a popular Pakistani dessert. So I'm hoping to badge this as a 'Food Travel post too. See, a  little bit of cheating going on... Anyway, ice-cream parlours as the equivalent of pubs in India and Pakistan. The South Asian community in the UK clearly felt the void and so when we were visiting friends in Tooting ( big South Asian community here), we went to this extremely busy ice-cream parlour with long queues et.al. That trip, combined with our recent visit to India, inspired me to make falooda at home. Here is how I made it



Serves 2
Ingredients:
Falooda sev ( noodles)-handful
Basil seeds ( Tukmaria or Falooda seeds), 2 tsp
Rose syrup ( I used Mapro), 6 tbsp
Mixed nuts, 2 tbsp
Cranberries ( you can use chopped fresh fruit instead), 4 tbsp or as you please!
Semi-skimmed milk ( or skinny milk): 1/2 cup
Vanilla ice-cream

Method:
Soak the basil seeds for at leat 30 mins in water until they swell and multiply in size. Soak the falooda sev in boiling water for 5 mins and rinse in ice cold water. Use tall glasses and layer the ingredients starting with rose syrup followed by mixed nuts, cranberries or fruit, sev and milk. Pour the milk gently through the sides of the glass so as to maintain the layers. Add a teaspoon of rose syrup to the milk. Now add the basil seeds and top off with a scoop ( or two) of vanilla ice-cream. Your falooda is ready to be served!

I hope you have fun making this recipe and let me know how you got on. Ann x