Lynn Strong

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Tag: recipe

Pumpkin Spice Season and Conference Season

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On sale, Recipes
Anyone else remember the old Looney Tunes “Wabbit season!…. Duck season!…. Elmer season?”

Somehow I have pulled off the posters and found “Pumpkin Spice Season and Conference Season.” And for the love of mercy, someone needs to thin the herd somehow!

I don’t think I’ve ever hit a schedule of 9 conferences in 5 weeks before. Flights of Foundry was two weeks ago, Rainbow Space Magic was last weekend, HearthCon and Cozy the Day Away are this weekend (I’m both presenting and running tech support), next week is WordPress Global Accessibility Day, the weekend after that is the Self-Publishing Advice Conference, and that’s before I start listing off the too-personally-identifiable conferences at my university.

I’ve just finished making the “In case of excessive virality, break glass and transfer the load to Google” emergency backup spreadsheet of book links for the Cozy the Day Away sale, because previous sales have caused the Bluehost server to struggle under the weight of thousands of cozy fantasy fans wanting at 90some books… and this time we’ve got 160 plus the attention of the entirety of HearthCon!

So if the server says “help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” I can throw out the spreadsheet link. The spreadsheet is not beautiful and filterable and personalized by each author… but Google can take the kind of load hits most other services can’t and keep on ticking. Still, here’s hoping cache tuning and view size reframing will buy us some breathing room? I am not actually a server admin, I am a user interface and metadata structure person. But I’ve hung out with enough server admins to have a vague idea of which words to look for in case of viral-necessary tuning?

Anyhow, I should find a recipe to post with this!

I have been vastly amused by the Cookbook Diss Tracks being laid down between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. Ishaq al-Mawsili’s grudge chased Ziryab from Baghdad to as close to the far end of the continent as he could get without falling into the ocean… and then Ziryab turned around and set up cultural court in Cordoba and laid down the culture and etiquette and personal grooming and fine dining standards that have lasted most of the next thousand years. But that needs to be a future blog post, because I have now formally Pumpkin Spiced Myself FOR SCIENCE.

Self, I thought, how can you call yourself a cozy fantasy writer if you have not tasted Starbucks’ own legendary Pumpkin Spice Latte? You should do that for HearthCon.

Self, I also thought, you have not previously done this because your body really, really hates coffee. Do not do food sensitivity-adjacent biological experiments during a two day convention where you’re also tech support.

So, last weekend and not this weekend, I turned myself into my own lab critter.

The lab notebook annotations include:

“Pumpkin spice” as a spice doesn’t technically have to have pumpkin itself in it, but yum! Very much nutmeg-forward on the spice blend, or else the sprinkle on the top was. I’ve been contemplating how I might add pumpkin-per-se to my own chai and reading up on how different folks recreate the pumpkin-having parts of Starbucks PSLs and came up with the variations below.

Really, Starbucks? 21 different modification dropdown menus with over 100 options for a single beverage? My low vision self made brain-frying noises trying to navigate through the system and I just hit the “default order” button on the iced pumpkin spice chai, because there was no coffee in it (theoretically).

Have you ever accidentally melted Culver’s pumpkin ice cream and then drank it anyway? The default-settings iced pumpkin spice chai tasted very much like that to me.

Some mistakes were made. I’d wondered if Starbucks might have enough Ambient Coffee in their water system for my food sensitivities to protest? Some empirical experimentation later:

Yeah it was a good thing I did this the weekend before HearthCon and Cozy the Day Away tech support, because my body went into full-on “As per my LAST EMAIL…”

Still. Food science has been scienced, complete with accidental biohazards. For SCIENCE!

If you’re not from the land of home-baked pumpkin pies…

The overlap between the ingredients in chai masala, poudre douce, and what you get in a jar of McCormick’s pumpkin spice mix are pretty high. Generally speaking, you’ll take out the black pepper and cardamom and add more nutmeg, but here’s what you get in a jar of McCormick’s pumpkin spice (which does not include pumpkin itself):

Cinnamon

Ginger

Nutmeg

Allspice

A sulfiting agent

Compare that to versions of poudre douce from Le Menagier de Paris:

(One version)

Cinnamon

Ginger

Nutmeg

Grains of paradise

Sugar

(Another version)

Cinnamon

Ginger

Cloves

Bay leaves

And then compare that to the simple base and complex variations of atraf al-tib from Kitab al-Tabikh:

Cardamom

Ginger

Cloves

(optional) Bay leaves

(optional) Rose petals

(more options if you like them) Nutmeg, mace, black pepper, spikenard…

I haven’t seen bay leaves or spikenard listed in a chai masala blend, but all the rest of it, including cinnamon and black pepper, have made appearances in different chai masala variations I’ve seen.

I currently live in the state that produces more pumpkins than anywhere else on the continent, and lived downwind of a pumpkin packing plant for quite a while. Somehow it smells much better coming out of the can than it did going in, and I don’t know what alchemy is necessary for that to happen. But as a result, there have always been cans of pureed pumpkin available year round in my area.

If you don’t have that available? Acorn squash or butternut squash make pretty good substitutes when you sweeten them and puree them and toss in some of the aforementioned pumpkin spice.

Or if you enjoy egg custard, the relationship between custard tart spice and pumpkin spice is pretty high too. And an American-style (sweet) pumpkin pie is much closer to a sweet custard tart than to a savory quiche.

When studying in the UK, the hosting university tried very earnestly to throw us a Thanksgiving feast complete with “pumpkin pie.” It was, yes, technically a pie containing pumpkin. But it was a savory pie containing slices of roasted pumpkin, skin and all, and — spoiler alert — you can’t roast most large orange carving-style pumpkins skin and all the way you could do with an eggplant. The big carveable ones have been bred to be tough enough to stand up to both overenthusiastic kids with serrated knives and squirrels delighted by the newfound entrance to the juicy meats inside, once that annoying candle in the guts burns itself out.

So a can of pumpkin puree and a pastry pie crust is how most folks start their pumpkin pies around here. But if you don’t think you can use a whole can of pumpkin puree, or if your neighbors are avid gardeners and you haven’t locked your porch/patio/garage/car trunk/anything in which a box of squash may be “helpfully” deposited and you’re desperate for something to do with the overflow?

Homemade pumpkin or other squash puree

For additional Starbucksification of your hot caffeinated beverage, should you so desire.

(The low spoons way for me to do this is to buy a can of puree, but that may not be as easy elsewhere, so…)

A squash or two

A baking dish which will hold them both when cut in half

Enough water to fill about 1/4 inch of the baking dish for extra steaming

Preheat an oven to 350 F / 175 C.

Halve your squash and take the seeds out.

Put about 1/4 inch of water in the bottom of your baking dish.

Put the squash cut side down on the baking dish. The water should help it steam rather than brown and glaze.

Roast your squash for about 45 minutes to an hour, until soft when poked with a fork.

Let it cool enough to handle, then scoop the innards away from the skin.

Mash it up with forks, a potato masher, or a blender, your preference.

If it’s a stringy squash you might want to press it lightly through a wire mesh sieve to extract the pulp and leave the strings behind.

You can either spice it to taste now or add spices later. I tend to add the spices later once I know what else is going into it (eggs and cream for a pie or tart, or tea/coffee for a beverage, or maybe I would make a big bowl of Carmarthenshire Welsh stwmp with as many mashable root vegetables as I could lay hands on, in which case I’m not going to want it pre-sweet-spiced for lattefication.)

Refrigerate until ready to use.

Imitation Starfaring Beverage with Pumpkin And Spice

Pumpkin puree (as above or from a can), about 2 Tbsp per beverage

La Lechera squeeze bottle (easy mode) or a can of sweetened condensed milk, about 2 Tbsp per beverage

Avoiding cow milk? Nut or soy milks plus some sugar will be thinner but taste similar

Egg nog flavored non dairy creamer can also bring a very similar spice profile, in which case you probably won’t need as much pumpkin spice

If you aren’t using sweetened condensed milk, you may want honey or simple syrup.

Pumpkin spice blend (McCormick or home-blended to taste), about 1/4 tsp per beverage

Hot beverage of your choice (coffee, masala chai, hot milk, hot milk alternative…)

Making tea or masala chai? You may want to brew it stronger than usual to stand up to the extra pumpkin and milk-or-alternative.

Ground nutmeg to dust the top with

(Optional) Whipped cream or alternative

(Optional) Whichever of the 100some other Starbucks additions makes you happy!

For a 12-16 oz mug:

2 Tbsp ish pumpkin puree

2 Tbsp ish sweetened condensed milk (squeeze bottle or can)
OR
Non dairy milk and sweeetener to taste

When preparing the hot beverage, stir the dry pumpkin spice in so that it gets a chance to cook along with the tea leaves (or the milk simmering or coffee brewing).

Fill most of the rest of the mug with your hot beverage.

Stir vigorously to blend together, and taste test to check the sweet-to-spice balance before topping.

(Optional) Apply whipped cream or whipped non-dairy alternative to the top of the hot beverage

(Optional) Dust with nutmeg

Sip, purr, repeat.
Book release: “Haroun and the Study of Mischief” Gets Unleashed!

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Book release, Disabilities, Haroun, Recipes
Or at least it does if I have correctly flipped all the switches and clicked all the clickables!

Haroun’s book is really personal for me. I share disability spectrums with both Shai Madhur and Haroun, and I have a lot of friends who share intersectional communities, so the afterstuff is longer than it was for Chai and Cat-tales, but the story itself is also well over twice as long even before I added in 50-some pages of recipes.

I am also drowning in small business minutiae on very little sleep; please pardon typos. Yesterday (9/6 as I’m prewriting this), I tried to do the marketing grind and also port my whole mailing list to a new provider because the current one decided this was the perfect month to halve their free tier and start charging more than I earn in an average month from book sales. And my brain just would not cope. Neither would my body or my eyes. So instead of being on the laptop juggling spreadsheets and logins, I was flat on my back with my tablet two inches from my nose, gleefully chatting zucchini/courgettes with Lacrima Mundi, QuiteBrief, Matt Mason, and Steve Hugh Westenra.

QuiteBrief and I both live in what I colloquially refer to as zucchini country, meaning the part of the world where at certain times of year you know you must lock your car, your porch, and/or your garage to prevent drive-by depositing of boxes of tomatoes and various gourds of a size that double as blunt instruments which were discovered under overgrown leaves by avid gardeners.

I have had to deal with 20 pounds of assorted squash in an entirely too short time window, and so zucchini bread, many soups, many stir fries, and mad fusion crossover food like potato-zucchini fritters and Carmarthenshire Welsh-meets-Korean variants on stwmp have made it into my experimental recipe collection. Matt has some delicious looking Greek variations in that thread and QuiteBrief’s chocolate zucchini bread also sounds intriguing.

We also bonded over a mutual appreciation of shiso, which features prominently in both Japanese and Korean food, and it makes a delightful substitute for mint with a delicate pink color (even when you use the green shiso variant) in sekanjabin. Unfortunately it doesn’t dry very well, but it’s essential in Japanese umeboshi pickles (at least in my opinion). Sekanjabin uses up a lot more of it than umeboshi do, though. I’ve also considered a shiso pesto sort of notion to blend shiso leaves with an olive and sesame oil blend and freeze in ice cubes for later use. (At some point I’m going to blog the medieval form of za’atar from Haroun’s bonus recipe collection, which is basically pesto made with thyme and walnuts instead of basil and pine nuts, and this is a note to future me to come back and link this in.)

I confess the chat did not make my small business obligations any shorter but it was a joy and a relief to just talk about food nerdery because I wanted to, not to grind more social media marketing performances because I was obligated to.

And since I have 50 pages of not-yet-blogged recipes from Haroun to choose from, here’s one of them! One of these days I really will get around to the mega-post about sharbat, sekanjabin, shrub, switchel, and various international variants on “sugar + acid + flavoring = beverage,” but in the meantime, here is a sweeter version of Najra’s Crimson Witches’ Brew.

Grandmother’s Karkadeh for Good Boys, Good Girls, and Good Folks

Technically karkadeh could be made as a sharbat, like the shahzada’s fragrant almond, khus, and sandalwood sharbat from Chai and Cat-tales. But Najra’s Crimson Witch’s Brew is at the other end of the scale from a sharbat even though it’s based on karkadeh. A sharbat is a sweet syrup with a particular flavor used to make drinks and sometimes dressings, karkadeh is a sweet hibiscus drink, and Najra’s Crimson Witch’s Brew is the sourest combination of hibiscus and other tart things that you’re willing to put in your mouth.

There are folk tales that the pharaohs also drank karkadeh, but unfortunately I haven’t found any references more concrete than “everyone says”-type marketing materials. I wouldn’t be surprised if hibiscus drinks have been made and consumed for that long – I just can’t document it.

Here are three variations based on whether you’d like to store sharbat concentrate and dilute to taste when you want to drink it or whether you’d like to make a cup at a time.

A pitcher for a party like Haroun’s:

1/4 to 1/2 cup dried hibiscus flowers

Up to the same amount of sugar (optional but customary)

2 quarts of water

Optional: A lime or some lime juice

Optional: Some rose water and/or mint sprigs

Simmer the hibiscus flowers and sugar together until the liquid is bright red and the sugar (if you’re using it) is dissolved, usually 5-10 minutes. (If some people in the party want sugar-free, you could also make the tisane without sugar and serve a container of simple syrup on the side for folks to use or not use as desired.)

When the color and flavor are as strong as you like, strain the petals out of the karkadeh with a sieve or cheesecloth.

Chill until you’re ready to serve.

Taste when cool, because temperature makes a taste difference. You might want to adjust the tartness with lime and/or simple syrup at this point. Add any rosewater after chilling, so that the flavors won’t evaporate with the steam.

Decorate the pitcher or glasses with mint sprigs if desired.

(If you plan to serve it with ice, use less water in the simmering to start with, so it will be less diluted by the ice melting.)

For sharbat concentrate to save and dilute later:

Low spoons? Monin sells a tasty hibiscus syrup that’s likely intended for tea shops, but I drink enough chai to be my own tea shop. So if you need any encouragement to become your own tea shop too, go forth and brew with all the tasty benedictions!

Making your own: Instead of making the sugar 1:1 with the hibiscus, you’ll want sugar 1:1 with water (or 2:1 with vinegar for some sharbats), so that you have a condensed syrup that you dilute to taste later. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a no-sugar alternative for this type of syrup.

Up to 3 cups sugar, separated

2 cups water

1/4 to 1/2 cup dried hibiscus petals (or, if you have them fresh, as many as you can wilt into the pot)

(Optional) Juice and zest from 1-2 limes, about 2-4 Tbsp

(After cooling) Rosewater and/or mint sprigs if desired

First, simmer the hibiscus petals and any optional lime zest for 10 minutes or so, in order for the flavor and color to be extracted. Use a sieve to strain out the petals and give them a good squeeze with the back of a spoon to extract all the liquid into the simmering pot. (I recommend removing the petals before adding the sugar because of how thick the syrup will be; you’ll lose a lot of syrup if you let it cling to the petals.)

After the petals have been removed, while the hot hibiscus tisane is still simmering, add 2 cups of sugar gradually, stirring so that the sugar dissolves. This will be a thick syrup when cooled.

Once 2 cups of sugar are dissolved in and the liquid is clear, adjust the sweetness/tartness with the lime juice.

You can taste test with a tablespoon of sharbat in about a quarter cup of cold water to assess whether you’d like it stronger or sharper. Don’t entirely cool the syrup until you’re sure you have the balance you want, though; you might overcorrect the tartness with the limes and need to dissolve some of that third cup of sugar in.

When you’re satisfied with the sweet-tart balance, cool the syrup. If you like rosewater, add a splash of it now. Store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

When serving, plan for one part syrup to three or four parts of cool water, more or less. (Again, taste testing is your friend! I use a couple tablespoons of syrup per cup of water. If you use carbonated water, you have your own karkadeh soda.)

For a sugar-free alternative, individual servings:

1-2 tsp dried hibiscus petals

1-2 cups hot water

(Optional) Sugar-free sweetener of your choice

(Optional) A slice of lime or sprig of mint

I do like hibiscus tisane without any sweetener in it as long as I don’t stack too many other bitter-makers into it. Everyone’s tastes vary, of course! You can also make a sugar-free batch at the pitcher size and offer simple syrup on the side for those who partake.
Oh My Dog… two weeks to unleashed!

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Book release, Disabilities, Haroun, Recipes
So, uh. Note to future me:

Don’t schedule three sales on your existing book, cover finalizing on two more books, final book generation on a ready-to-launch book, and writing the last 2-3 chapters on the first piece of a trilogy for the same week as the start of the university semester ever, EVER again, got it?

(The whimpering sound you hear is the faltering remnants of my coping mechanisms.)

I have probably gone off the wall with fifty pages of bonus recipes in the back of Haroun. But there’s a whole marketplace full of delicious nibbles, and Upaja’s cauldrons, and Grandmother’s karkadeh for good boys and good girls who are much too innocent to drink her kumiss. I wanted a lot of fun stuff to counterbalance the less-fun parts of the notes about living with multiple disabilities and how that informs both Haroun’s method of navigating a world he can’t see and Madhur’s method of navigating a world without motor vehicles when he owns very little other than his priest-cloths and his walking stick.

Anyhow, I’m trying to wrap up the business-and-advertising pieces with my three-hours-of-sleep brain in order to unplug everything and force myself to finish off the three chapters that have been fighting me since June. It’s tricky to figure out exactly where to land Chai and Charmcraft’s plot plane when it’s the first book of a trilogy, you have to leave certain connections unresolved for the next two books to have launch points, you also have to have a satisfying-for-this-book pause point, and your main character is a prophet!

So, if the universe does not laugh too loudly (I say while knocking on both wood and my skull to avert mishaps), I’m hoping to release (or unleash) Haroun on September 13.

That’s if the proof prints come in acceptably and if I haven’t too badly bolloxed up the existence of both an Amazon paperback and a Draft2Digital-to-many-places-and-it-might-try-to-horn-in-on-Amazon-I-don’t-know-yet paperback with different ISBNs which I have heard both “it’s fine” and “you have set yourself up for an irretrievable and expensive identity hairball” about from different sources?

I would very much like to make paperbacks available to libraries who won’t buy from Amazon! But if this all goes sideways, the non-Amazon edition is going to be what has to go. 95% of my sales come from Amazon, and less than 1% of those are paperback. So if I get caught in the middle of Dueling Paperbacks, 1% of 5% means I’m unlikely to sell more than one non-Amazon paperback every five to ten years, and at that point it’s not worth the bureaucratic combat.

So, a pickle recipe sounds very, very appropriate for the current situation, wouldn’t you say? Somehow “pickle” is turning out to be frequently associated with “paperback complications” in my life!

Salted Lemon Pickles

Salted lemon pickles are a staple ingredient across much of the lemon-producing swathe of the world, from California to Africa to Vietnam. We find recipes from the tenth century onward, and I’m pretty sure they were making them before anyone wrote it down in a copy that survived.

Nawal Nasrallah’s Treasure Trove’s recipe 607 in the Google Scholar preview is very like Daniel Newman’s Sultan’s Feast recipe 226, and these are very similar to how I’ve seen modern bloggers describe the making of salted lemons: cutting them in quarters and covering with salt and lemon juice and then topping with olive oil (or otherwise making sure the jar is full and airless).

Out of spoons? You can buy jars of salt preserved lemons online as well!

The Sultan’s Feast recipe 226 says: “Score lemons crosswise and fill the cuts with salt. Layer the lemons on a platter and weigh them down with stones. Cover and leave for three days [Kanz 607 says two]. Then take them out, put in a large glass jar and take the liquid. Dye it with saffron and take out the pips. If you want [more] lemon juice, add some. Then tightly pack everything in a jar, making sure [the lemons] are immersed. Seal with good quality olive oil, put a lid on top, and store.”

Some key details here:

You need a lot of salt. Probably more salt than you’d guess. Kosher salt or sea salt is better than iodized salt for this purpose; medieval cookbook writers didn’t have iodized salt.

You need a lot of lemon juice too. They really do need to be submerged. A pickling weight can help keep them under the surface. (You can get the extra juice from standard lemons since you won’t be eating the peel of those.) Because the peels are included and most Western recipes assume you aren’t eating the lemon peel, you may want to look for organic lemons to avoid pesticides and preservational waxes applied to the surface of standard lemons.

If you can find doqq, boussera, or Meyer lemons, which are generally small and round they’ll have thinner pith and more flesh than the longer and pointier varieties of lemon.

Christine Benlafquih of Taste of Maroc has an excellent article with helpful photographs of both homemade and market-bought salted lemons at different lengths of pickling. I admit I’m one of those not-in-plastic purists, though, and a pint or quart Mason jar is easier for me to calibrate by than “whatever your nearest empty container happens to be.”

For one quart or two pint jars, ideally sterilized before use:

6-12 Meyer lemons or similar round lemons, preferably organic

Additional lemon juice from whatever’s handy, possibly a cup or more

A couple cups kosher or sea salt (non-iodized)

Saffron if you’d like Even More Yellow

Optional but helpful: Two nesting glass or ceramic bowls that fit together neatly, or two plates with a lip to catch juices, very clean

Optional: Olive oil to separate the lemon juice from the top of the jar(s), if the jar lids are metal rather than glass or plastic

Wash and dry your lemons thoroughly to remove any contaminants from travel.

Cut your lemons in quarters, not quite all the way through.

Scatter a couple tablespoons of salt in the bottom of your bowls if you have them, or your pickling jar(s) if you don’t.

Coat every surface of your lemon with salt, including stuffing the insides of the cuts.

If you have nesting bowls or plates and want to try the Sultan’s Feast edition, spread your to-be-pickled lemons among the salt in the lower bowl, then place the upper bowl on top of them and weight with a couple cans (or rocks). Keep in a cool, clean place (refrigerator recommended) for a couple of days.

When your weights have pressed some juice out of the lemons into the salt, transfer everything – lemons, juice, salt, and all – to your pickling jars.

(If you don’t have the nesting bowls / plates arrangement or want to get things refrigerated sooner, just begin the whole process in the pickling jars, in which case skip straight to the step below.)

Layer salt and lemons in the jar, pressing down firmly as you go to compress them and remove empty air. Add more salt and more lemons until you can’t fit any more in, but make sure the last lemon is below the surface of the jar so that it can be covered.

If you’d like to add Even More Yellow, this would be a good time to sprinkle a few saffron threads in.

Pour over as much lemon juice as is needed to submerge the lemons.

If your jar lid is metal rather than glass, you’ll want to separate the acidic lemon juice from the jar lid somehow. The Treasure Trove suggests topping the jar off with olive oil, but then you can’t move the jar much until you plan to use it. One modern recipe suggested using a piece of waxed paper to separate the lemon juice from a metal lid. Some glass jars come with swing top glass lids and rubber gaskets that wouldn’t need the acid protection, but air is your enemy here, so you do want the jar as airless as possible until you decide to use your lemons.

Refrigerators didn’t exist in the Middle Ages, but they do now, and they’ll buy you time to eat through your lemon stash. Because they’re so tart and salty, you may want to rinse the salt off before eating them. Some people dispose of the flesh and mince just the rind for use in cooking.
Cozy the Day Away and Lassi Nog

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On sale, Recipes, Writing
So, wow, it’s been a year, hasn’t it. I’m still trying not to think about 2025.

If anyone else out there is in need of an introvert break between big holiday events, I think Karryn was pretty brilliant with the timing of the last Cozy the Day Away sale this year, which is happening tomorrow when I’m writing this (aka Dec. 29)

In the general lull between big events? Check.

Introverts wanting recharge time before the next round of big energy events? Check.

Some folks with gift cards they’d like to find joy with? Check.

Some folks in need of respite for the soul after too many sharp edged family or other encounters? Hoo boy, check.

So yeah, if you need a bit of escape time on the 29th, check out the sale.

I also sold another story that’s coming out next July! And I’ve got about 42,000 of what I’m guessing will be about 60,000 to 80,000 words written on the first book of the trilogy, with some wild ambition to try to finish a first draft in January. Not sure if that’s going to happen, but knock wood?

When putting together the playlist for Shai Madhur’s mouse party with Emily Goss on Bluesky, I encountered the notion that it’s possible I’m the first person to put together the idea of egg nog and lassi? I’ve found egg nog, eggless nog, and, uh, I wish I was kidding about celery nog.

But egg nog was hard to find this year — it looks like electing an orange fascist actually does nothing to miraculously lower the price of eggs, increase the availability of egg products, or solve the avian flu pandemic spreading among agricultural birds and cattle, go figure.

I can still find yogurt, though. And people who are less allergic to corn than I am could have easy mode eggless nog with Bird’s custard powder. I do miss Bird’s, it was delicious when I could still eat it.

So for folks who can handle either egged or corn-starch-having eggless nog, Ranveer Brar has a video with both varieties.

Here’s my egg-free and corn-free lassi nog for the rest of us.

Lassi Nog

For each cup:

1/2 to 1 cup sweet vanilla yogurt (or regular yogurt plus 2-3 drops vanilla and simple syrup to taste)

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp nutmeg

A few threads of saffron

A few drops of rum extract or brandy extract if you want familiar flavor without the alcohol

1 Tbsp water (plus extra water or milk to thin the texture… or a shot of brandy if you prefer)

Start the saffron soaking in 1 Tbsp water while preparing the rest.

Put some yogurt in a container with spare stirring room and stir until soft and blended.

Add in your cinnamon, nutmeg, and chosen extracts or alcohol, then stir through.

When the saffron water has turned golden, stir it in as well. (Usually I would recommend grinding saffron into sugar for hot chai, but I’m not confident the sugar would dissolve well in cold yogurt. If anyone tries it that way, let me know.)

At this point, assess the drinkability of your beverage and decide if you’d like it thinner (more water/milk/alcohol) or thicker (more yogurt).

If you’re patient, refrigerate it for a few hours to let the cinnamon and nutmeg meld in.

When ready to serve, grate a bit more nutmeg on top of the glass.

I am not patient and it smells delicious, so I drank mine straight away. (Clearly I will need to experiment with larger batches for leftovers.)