During the summer time, I’m always looking for unique ways to stay cool during the hot summer months. On the East Coast, the month of August is an especially tough with high heat and humidity. During this time of the year, I’m always looking for new ways to whip up delicious and refreshing desserts that can be made at home. The usual things we might turn to are traditional ice creams or semifreddo (which do not need an ice cream maker) or other options like flavored ices and sorbets.
I happened to be watching a Food Network show called Unwrapped, where the host traveled across the country tasting ice cream from some of America’s best and unique ice cream shops. One of them was a store in San Francisco called Bombay Ice Cream and another also in California called Mashti Malone’s. These non-traditional ice cream stores piqued my interest because of the unique flavors and toppings that were used. At Bombay Ice Cream, some of their exotic flavors were things like black jamun, musk melon and green tea cardamom — they even offered a large variety of flavors in a frozen dessert called Kulfi. If you’ve never heard of this before, it is a frozen custard type of ice cream that is quite dense and made from slowly reducing slightly sweetened whole milk until it has thickened, and it is then molded and frozen.
While he was visiting Mashti Malone’s, I was fascinated by a topping that was served over the ice cream, and simply could not figure out what it was. It almost looked like fine shreds of coconut, but it wasn’t. I had to find out what that stuff was, so I hopped online to look for it. Finally, I discovered that it was something called faloodeh (pronounced fa-loo-de), and even goes by a few other spellings such as faludeh and falude.
Essentially, this is a very fine noodle that was traditionally made with a cornstarch mixture and dropped into water through a fine mesh sieve, creating strands that looked like cut pasta pieces. Modern day versions use a very fine strand of rice vermicelli to achieve the same result. You can find these just about anywhere these days, but especially in Asian markets. You really don’t have to cook them since they are so thin that all you have to do is soak them in hot water for about an hour. They are then cut into small segments using kitchen shears and then tossed into a sorbet that is made with rose water. If you are not a fan of rose water, you can use orange blossom water. This dessert is traditionally eaten with a drizzle of lime juice and topped with sour cherries. I only had some lemons on hand and some strawberries, so that was how I enjoyed mine. It is such a unique dessert that even if you never find yourself at a traditional Persian restaurant that serves it you must try this at home at least once in your life.
Faloodeh
¼ pack fine vermicelli noodles
enough hot water to soak noodles
6 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon rosewater (or orange blossom water)
Lime juice (or lemon juice)
sour cherries in juice for topping (or macerated strawberries in lemon juice)
First add the water to a medium sized pot along with the sugar and bring to a rolling simmer for about 20 minutes then remove from the heat. Allow it to cool and add 1 tablespoon of rose water, then pour it into a shallow dish that will go into the freezer. Every hour, remove the container and use a fork to create the sorbet by scraping the ice that forms. Depending on how shallow your dish is, this can take anywhere from one to three hours. It starts off like this after one hour…
And eventually gets to this…
While this is in the freezer, prepare you vermicelli. One pack of rice vermicelli will go a long way. This bag can make 4 batches of faloodeh…
Remove the quantity of vermicelli that you want and place it in a medium sized bowl. Pour hot water over this and allow it to stand on the counter for up to 1 hour. Then drain completely and allow it to cool. Next, cut the vermicelli into small bite size pieces, and set aside until the sorbet is ready.
Once it is ready, toss in the noodles and serve it immediately in small glasses topped with either fresh lime (or lemon) juice and top with sour cherries (or macerated strawberries). This is a true taste of Persia in a very delicious, simple and unique way.
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