Madness…and frozen yogurt

Moving.

This has now officially (and permanently) become my status.

I should really rename this blog Messy Brainwaves That Keep Moving.

Its not really enough that I left home at 18 years of age to attend graduate school in Baroda, shuttling between that sleepy city and my hometown. Five years on, it wasn’t enough when, looking for work with a decent enough pay to allow weekend eat-outs and shopping, I trudged to Mumbai dragging my tired bags along.

Now, Nottingham is standing on the edge of the parapet yelling for me. The offer letter has arrived for my post-graduation degree and I’m currently extremely busy freaking out.

Part of me is nervous out off my existence, because I don’t know what to expect. Part of me is sad, because I’m leaving everything I know and love for a whole year at least. Part of me is constantly confused and on the edge with handling formalities and arrangements. And the final part is just plain excited at the prospect of poking my head through to Europe!

Where will I stay? Its already late. The University halls are all booked. I have no place to stay. I don’t know when I’ll get there considering the fact that I haven’t booked anything that resembles an air ticket. The initial offer letter had the wrong subject on it. The new one hasn’t been dispatched yet. I haven’t registered with the University, mostly because I have to be present IN PERSON to register myself as a student. I don’t have any syllabus or class details. I still have to pack. I still have to go grab myself a new laptop. I’m in a mess and technically homeless. I’ve lived in three different cities since mid 2008 and now I would have to move my arse (see how English I’ve become already) off to a whole other country. And all I’m concerned about is how high a cloud I would be on, eating my way through it!

I’ve already started on a list. My query on black puds on Chow has met with passionate responses from UK’s proud patriots.

And all this even while I’m still nine and half hours of flight time away from my destination. The amount of sleep I lost over my broken heart and Thesis is nothing compared to the amount of sleep I’m losing now.

Every fear and piece of stress has now blended themselves together with the fact that my brother is also on the verge of flying off to Georgia, USA for his pilot’s license. People around the house keep tripping over boxy luggage, yells over the phone on international calls, trying very hard to hold decent conversations with the Brits, lists are growing longer by the minute, the VISA people might as well have put up permanent residence in our apartment, piles of winter clothes dot every room.

Out of all the madness, I will try hard to chill with frozen yogurt.

I need frozen yogurt. I would settle for a rich and creamy ice cream any day, if it didn’t come with a side of guilt. Fro-yo on the other hand, goes easy on me. And my skinny jeans, which is a good thing considering the fact that I bought two pairs of those yesterday.

And then I go and add copious amounts of butter and sugar to natural homemade yogurt. Homemade, because its always been that way. Me, my mother before me and my grandmother before her — we always, always, (always) have an over-sized bowl of curd resting overnight under a damp cloth, quite calmly at one dark corner of our kitchen counters.

The brown butter was a first for me, but thanks to Techamuanvivit, that problem was dealt with. At this point, I should remind my readers that I’m a certified harbinger of burnt caramel, burnt to the point of no return. But I’m doing better nowadays, really.

Brown Butter Caramel Frozen Yogurt

Ingredients:

• Half a cup of unsalted butter
• Two cups of Greek yogurt (of if you prefer, homemade yogurt, strained through two layers of cheesecloth and hung for two hours)
• 1 1/2 cups of white sugar
• 1 tablespoons of water
• A pinch of salt

How-to:

• Heat a pan and add the butter. Cook on low heat (no stirring please) till the butter melts. It will bubble up seriously as it cooks. Shake and swirl a few times to prevent hot spots. Cook till it turns a golden brown…any further and you’ll end up burning it. Brown butter needs you to have a sharp eye.
• Pour it out into a cool glass bowl.
• Put the pan back on heat and add the sugar with the water. Turn up the heat and swirl the sugar around (stirring would only make the sugar crystallize again). Cook till the caramel takes up a slightly thick consistency.
• Stir the caramel slowly into the butter and let the mixture cool for 3-5 minutes before folding it into the yogurt (in a separate bowl) along with a pinch of salt. Pour the mixture into a shallow freeze-proof box with a cover and freeze for 4 hours.
• After four hours, break up the ice crystals with a fork and blitz them in a blender till smooth. Pour back into the container and freeze for another 4 hours.
• Scoop, dunk and nurse a big bowl of it as soon as you’re ready…..or crazy.