Faloodeh/Falooda - Noodles and the Shake
Ingredients: (4 servings)
• 3 cups rice cellophane noodles or Falood Sev found in some Indian stores
• 1 cup rose syrup or sharbat - coloured red if available. Rooafzah is a brand available in some Indian stores. The generic name is sharbat gulab
• 3 cups chilled skimmed-milk
• vanilla ice-cream (1 scoop per serving)
• 1 cup (lemon scented) basil seeds (called sabja/takmaria/falooda seeds in Indian stores) soaked in warm water for an hour or until they develop a translucent, slippery coat. Drain and chill. Careful: they are super sticky.
Directions:
Prepare/boil the rice noodles according to the package directions. Strain the noodles and allow them to cool in a refrigerator stirring occasionally. Before serving, beat chilled milk until frothy. Add 2-3 tablespoons of sharbat (syrup) to a glass (see comments below). Very gently add enough rice noodles up to half the glass. Try to keep the layers separate. Tilt the glass and gently pour the frothed milk over top (if using a red sharbat try not to let the milk mix with the sharbat), add a tablespoon soaked basil seeds (they look like tiny translucent eggs with black centres floating on top of the float), add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and serve with a long straw and spoon in the same manner as a milk shake or float.
Alternative noodle preparation method: boil the noodles for 15 minutes and then boil them in milk for an additional 5-10 minutes.
Comments from my sister Purveen: "Use skim/low fat milk (otherwise it can get quite heavy) and only about two tablespoons of rose syrup (otherwise it can get sickly sweet). I actually hand whisk the milk and ice-cream together (use equal parts of milk and ice-cream) - then you follow the same process as your recipe - my friends love it!"