G3 Food Spot: Bengali Sweets

Wishing all friends a very happy Tamil New Year and Vishu.

Ras Malai, basically a Bengali sweets made from a cottage cheese in a flavoured milk. I love this sweet, and had tried this in my kitchen several times and usually it comes out very well, my husband use to say that the taste is as store bought.

Ingredients:
RAS:

Full cream milk – 1litre
Sugar – 1/2 cup
Saffron few strands
Pistachios few
Almonds few
Cardamom powder

Method:

Crush and Soak the saffron strands in warm milk.
Chop the nuts into thin slices.
In a heavy bottom vessel add milk and bring to boil till it reduces to half the quantity, keeping in low flame and stir frequently.

Then add the sugar, cardamom powder, chopped nuts (reserve few nuts for garnish) and soaked saffron strands along with milk and allow boiling for couple of minutes till the sugar dissolves and then switch off the flame.
Now the Ras is ready.

Malai:

Full cream milk – 1 litre
Lemon juice – 1 tbsp
Sugar – 1 cup
Water – 3 cups
Cardamom powder – 1tsp

Method:

In a heavy bottom vessel, boil the milk. Once it starts boiling sim the flame and add lemon juice.
Now you will see the milk starts separate and curdles, now turn off the heat and strain in the damp cheese cloth or muslin cloth.

Rinse under the running water to remove the sourness of lemon flavour and hang the cloth to drain the excess water, for 1 hour.

Remove and open the cloth and knead gently to get soft and pliable dough and make a small balls in gooseberry sized.

In a pressure cooker add water, sugar and cardamom powder and mix well to gets sugar dissolves and then allow to boil, once it starts boiling drop the panner balls carefully and leave for 5 minutes.

Then close the lid and pressure cook for 1 whistle and Switch off the stove.
Open the lid after the pressure releases, you can see the balls doubled in size, soft and spongy.
Transfer these paneer balls with sugar syrup to another serving bowl and leave it for 1 hour, to absorb the sugar syrup.