Home Made Almond Milk

Ingredients

Almonds - 1 cup
Water - about 5 cups (Fill the cup to the dotted line in the maker)
Sugar - Scant 1/3 of a cup
Vanilla essence - 2tsp

Method:



Soak the almonds overnight. Soaking makes the nuts plump up nicely and easier to digest. Drain the water and add the almonds to the mesh part of the soymilk maker. Add water and turn it on. Once the milk is extracted , you can sieve it through a cheese cloth (optional). Add sugar and vanilla extract. Enjoy warm or cold.

Notes:

You can extract the milk using the blender if you don't have the soymilk maker.

Kashayam

My mom would make this medicinal drink/kashayam whenever anybody at my home feels sick. I asked my mom to get all the goodies from INDIA that she would add along with sukku in the Kashayam.

Ingredients

Sukku/Dry Ginger
Arathai (The Lesser Galanga)
Sittharathai (Galangal/Alpinia speciosa)
narukumalam
kiradakodi
saranaver
Milagu/Pepper
Corriander seeds
Karupatti

Method :
Pound all the ingredients coarsely using mortar and pestle. Boil water in a saucepan. Add all the ground ingredients once the water comes to a boil. Let the water get reduced in quantity. Strain it and have the Kashayam with or without milk.

Soy Milk

Soy Milk is a real good alternative drink for people who are dairy-allergic. It's a good source of protein. I am not a regular drinker of soymilk. But I do drink occasionally. I got inspired by my Chinese friend and started liking it. So I and she went and bought Soy-milk-maker that costs around 70$. She bought because the soy-maker she had became old and not working efficiently. I just bought for the sake of buying and curiosity.

I did do a lot of research on soymilk benefits. I got both negative and positive feedback. When I brought it home, my husband commented that it was just one more addition to the cabinet space. But to justify my buy, I told that I can make coconut milk, sesame milk and so forth. In fact I tried but everything ended up in real disaster. The machine is good to make soymilk. You can extract almond milk/rice milk too. My friend makes like soy + black bean combination. I am trying to use it at least once a month for myself and take it to my office for my friends.


To extract Soy-milk with the soy-milk maker, I soak the beans overnight. It takes about 15 minutes to get soy-milk with this maker. The only drawback with this is I can't make just one glassful of soy-milk. I have to put water to a certain point in the vessel for the maker to start which forces me to put lot of beans too. But the procedure is very simple.

Fill up the filter with the soaked Soy Beans.
Add clean water to the cylinder between the water level marks.
Plug the cord in and press the start button. That's it.

Whenever I make this my family members gave a look as if I am making something so disgusting. Nobody ever wanted to have a sip of it. But I like it. The Soymilk that comes out of the maker is too hot. So be watchful once it is done.


Notes:

You can make soy-milk out of dry beans too. But you get better soy-milk by soaking the beans overnight. Soaking the beans gives good yield and healthy soy-milk as soaking reduces the phytate contents found in the dry Soy beans.

I am planning to make Tofu soon. Watch out my space for the Tofu recipe.