Take pista in a small bowl and soak them in ¼ Cup water for 4-5 hours. Water should cover all the nuts
After a few hours, drain the water. Add them in mixer jar
Add 1-2 Tbsp milk and grind them. Add some more milk to grind them into a fine paste
Pound the elaichi into a powder
In a thick bottomed pan, start heating remaining milk till it scalds (just before it boils)
In a bowl, add ¼ Cup of this warm milk and into this add pista paste. Mix well, this will temper the pista paste it does not form lumps when added to hot milk. Adding warm milk into pista paste makes it easy to mix into the rest of the milk
Meanwhile, add sugar to heated milk in pan and mix. Keep stirring till all sugar gets mixed
Now pour the tempered pista paste into the rest of the milk and mix well
Add elaichi powder and mix well
Keep stirring till it froths up and thickens. Turn off heat
Once cooled to room temperature, chill in the refrigerator for a few hours. Serve chilled with some slivered/chopped pistas and powdered elaichi sprinkled on top
Notes
To make it vegan, add almond milk and use it as per instructions on the carton
Along with elaichi you can also add kesar/saffron. I wanted to keep the light green colour intact so I have added only elaichi for flavour
Serve it chilled or warm
Use whole or full cream milk. Skimmed or semi-skimmed milk does not thicken very much
Adjust sugar as per taste
Keep stirring milk especially after adding pista paste as it might stick to the bottom of the pan and burn
Recipe by Food Of Interest at https://foodofinterest.com/pista-doodh/