Shrikand using Mascarpone Cheese, Double Cream and Quark

Shrikand is a sweet Dish made with yogurt and always served chilled.  It is often served with pooris. It is also be served as a sweet dish at the end of a meal.  Shrikand with puris used to be one of the Sunday lunch meals my dad used to serve in his restaurant.   It brings back happy memories of my youth when we had lazy Sunday lunches of no cooking and being served by the staff who made hot puris for us.  The shrikand used to be made the traditional way where home made yogurt was tied in a muslin cloth to remove all the whey to form hung yogurt to which sugar was added.

But what happens when you want to make shrikand quickly and you have no home made yogurt?   One option is to buy curd cheese and  make shrikand like in my recipe here. However, I have not been able to get any curd cheese recently so I tried to make it using other similar ingredients.  I used  Italian mascarpone cheese, double cream and Quark.  Quark is available in most UK supermarkets and very similar to curd cheese.  It tastes a bit like a day old home made yogurt when it has just started to get a bit sour so perfect for getting the shrikand like  taste.  More information about Quark is here.

Ingredients for 4-5 servings of shrikand:

• 250 grams Italian mascarpone cheese
• 200 mls fresh double cream
• 250 gms Quark (fat free soft cheese)
• 4-5 tbls sugar or any sugar substitute
• large pinch saffron
• ½ tsp ground cardamom
• large pinch of ground nutmeg
• handful of whole almonds some chopped small and some chopped into 2  (you can also add small chopped pistachios)

Method:

1. Transfer the double cream to a food processor and whip it until it becomes light and fluffy.  Do not overdo this as you could end up making butter!!

2.    Add in the mascarpone cheese, Quark and  the sugar and mix again.

3.   Add in the nutmeg, cardamom and saffron and mix once.  Taste and add more sugar if you need it.

4.   Transfer the  Shrikhand into a serving dish and decorate with almonds and (pistachios if you have any).  Leave it in the fridge before serving.

5. Serve it as dessert or just as a meal with puris. 

How do you like to eat your shrikand?