Rasmalai - Indian Cooking Challenge (Apr 2010)

Srivalli selected Rasmalai as our next challenge for the month of April 2010 in Indian Cooking Challenge.

Rasmalai is a delicious dessert consisting of sugary balls of cottage cheese (chhana in Bengali) soaked in sweetened and thickened milk, flavored with cardamom, saffron and garnished with dry fruits. It tastes best, when served chilled.

The original recipe was provided by Lavi. As always, I followed the recipe as stated by Srivalli and the Rasmalai turned out perfect.

Here is the recipe



Ingredients:

• Milk: 3 litres (2 ltr for making paneer and 1 ltr for making rasa / milk syrup)
• Maida (plain flour): 1 tsp
• Vinegar: 3 tbsp
• Water: 5 cups
• Sugar: 16 tbsp (8 for sugar syrup and 8 for rasa / milk syrup)
• Saffron: 3-4 strands
• Pista: 10 finely chopped
• Cardamon, crushed: 2 -3

Method:

1. Boil 2 litres of milk and let it cool thoroughly and rfrigerate the milk for 12 hours. Remove the thick layer of skin formed over the milk the next day (after 12 hours).
2. Boil the milk, when the milk starts to boil, add vinegar. The milk will curdle and paneer will start floating on top and the whey water will stay on the bottom of the vessel. Place a muslin / cotton cloth over a bowl, filter the paneer.
3. Pour 2 cups of water (to remove the sourness of vinegar), tie it well and let it hang for one hour until the paneer is completely drained of whey water.
4. Remove the paneer from the muslin, knead well for 5-10 minutes. Add maida to the paneer and make small balls.
5. In a pressure cooker, add 3 cups of water and sugar, bring it boil, add the paneer balls one by one and close the lid, simmer and let it cook for 15 minutes (until the balls become double in size). Press the paneer balls gently to drain the excess sugar syrup.
6. Prepare the thick and creamy milk syrup by boiling the milk and reducing to half of the original quantity. Add sugar, saffron strands and crushed cardamom to the milk and mix thoroughly.
7. Slowly release the paneer balls to the milk syrup. Pour the rasmalai in a serving bowl, cool and refrigerate. Garnish with pistas and serve chilled.