The Magic Of Rasgullas

Rasgullas are the famous Bengali staple sweet. Bengali sweet starts with rasgullas and then the list goes on. Rasgullas are basically cheese balls cooked and soaked in the sugar syrup. Practice makes the best rasgullas with perfect texture and tastes. With base as rasgullas, you can make several other sweets like Rasmalai, Rasmaduri etc . So lets see how to make these soft and spongy rasgullas. If you have kids at home, you can try some coloured rasgullas and show the real magic to your kids. They will love and enjoy these pretty looking rasgullas.

For Making Paneer

• Whole Milk – 2 litres
• Lemon – 1 large
• Semolina – 1tbsp
• Sugar – 2 tsp

For Making Syrup

• Sugar – 2 cups
• Water – 6 cups
• Cardamom pods – 7 nos

For Magic

• You need few food colours and mix it in kneaded dough and follow the process as mentioned below

PREPARATION

• Bring the milk to boil. Keep stirring so that milk does not stuck at the bottom.
• When the milk rolls to boil, switch off the flame and slowly add lemon juice and keep stirring. The milk will start to curdles and cheese will separate from whey.
• Strain the curdle milk using cheese cloth.
• Collect the cheese in the cheese cloth and wash it under cold water to remove the sourness (taste of lemon juice) from the cheese.
• Tie up the cheese cloth and squeeze  out excess water. The best way is to hang the tied  cheese cloth to drain out the excess water.
• After 5 minutes, take the drained cheese onto the plate.Add semolina and sugar. Knead atleast for 5 minutes with back of your hands  until you get smooth mixture.

• Divide the dough into four balls
• Then divide each big ball into 5 small balls. Roll out each balls into perfect round ball.
• Like wise roll remaining cheese balls.
• For making syrup, combine water and sugar into wide bottomed pot. When syrup starts to boil, add crushed cardamom pods.
• Add cheese balls and cover the pan. Cook for 45 minutes.
• Syrup boiling for long time may thicken and make rasgullas hard. To avoid this add little warm water to the boiling syrup.
• After 45 minutes, switch off the flame. You will see rasgullas are double in size. As the rasgullas cool down they will shrink in size. Serve rasgullas cold or room temperature.

Ras Maduri

Ras maduri is the sweet basically made with rasgullas. Whenever you have leftover rasgullas , you can try this recipe and I am very sure within next  days you will make this sweet from scratch or atleast you will get rasgulla box from shop to make this sweet. Because I did the same and I was really in love with this ras maduri , the combination of juicy rasgullas and delicious sweetened mawa.
Here each rasgullas are cut into halves and then topped with mawa and then you can  decorate the way you like. This was my diwali special sweet for this year and my loved ones were really happy after they tasted this sweet. So lets go through the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

• Rasgullas – 8 pieces
• Mawa – ½ cup
• Powdered sugar – 2 tbsp
• Rose water – few drops
• Few food colour drops
• Truity fruity or any dry fruits to garnish
• Few cupcake liners

PREPARATION

• Cut each rasgullas into halves and let it remain soaked into the sugar syrup.
• Add few food colour drops into the syrup and stir well, so that rasgullas gets nice colour.
• Meanwhile prepare sweetened mawa.
• Take mawa onto the plate, add powdered sugar , few food colour drops and rose water. Knead  everything well till you get nice smooth mixture.
• Arrange cupcakes liners onto the plate and placed each halved rasgullas in the liners.
• Divide sweetened mawa according to the rasgullas portion and placed them on each portion. Then decorate with some truity fruity or dry fruits.
• Ras maduri is ready to serve.

Fulkopi Macher Jhol- Bengali style fish curry with cauliflower

I had a keen interest to try some Bengali cuisines, so thought to start  with this basic soupy curry prepared with fish and cauliflower. Fulkopi is cauliflower and macher is fish in Bengali, so the name of curry is Fulkopi Macher Jhol. Here you can use any sweet water fleshy fish like rohu, tilaphia. This curry is easy to prepare with simple ingredients and will satisfy your meal. So quickly let see the ingredients...

INGREDIENTS

• Tilaphia fish: 2 fillet, cut into 2 inch pieces
• Cauliflower: 5 medium sized florets
• Tomato: 1 big
• Green chilies: 2 nos
• Cilantro – 2 tbsp
• Onion paste: 2 tbsp
• Ginger paste: 1 tsp
• Cumin powder: 1/2 tsp
• Coriander powder: 1 tsp
• Chili powder: 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric powder – ½ tsp
• Salt to taste
• Sugar: ¼ tsp (optional)
• Oil: 3 tbsp

 PREPARATION

• Wash the cauliflower inwater and soak it in hot water along with salt for 10 minutes .
• Wash the fish and cut into pieces. Apply tumeric powder and salt. Mix well and marinate for 10 minutes.
• Combine ginger paste, cumin powder, coriander powder ,chili powder in 1/3 cup of water. Keep it aside.
• Heat pan and add 2 tbsp of oil and fry the marinated fish pieces until they are golden brown on both the sides.
• Once done, take out the pieces and in the same pan, add cauliflower florets along with tumeric and salt. Fry until cauliflower florets are light golden in colour. And take them out.
• Into the same pan, add remaining oil and add onion paste. Fry till raw smell goes off.
• Then add combined spice mixture and sauté till oil separates at the sides.
• Add cubed tomato and fry till tomato cubes are soft.
• Now add 1 cup of water and mix well.
• Also add fried cauliflower and slitted green chillies. Cover the lid and let the floret get cooked and become soft.

• Then add fried fish pieces. Check for the salt and also add pinch of sugar.
• Cover and cook for 5 minutes so that fish can soak all the flavours into it.
• Finally garnish with chopped cilantro.
• Fulkopi Macher Jhol is ready to serve with hot rice.

Rajbhog -Flavored with fresh Pineapple

The Rajbhog is the  irrestible dessert recipe which belongs to Rasgulla family . The only difference is Rajbhog is larger than rasgulla. Kesar Rajbhog is very famous. For the different flavour, i try with fresh pineapple. In the image you can see that rajbhog are dipped in the pineapple syrup. Believe me that the sweet was super delicious and truly mouthwatering. Do try it and very very sure that you all will surely surely like it. So let's start


INGREDIENTS

• Paneer – 250 gms
• Sugar – 1 kg
• Maida – 1 tbsp
• Suji/ Semolina – 1 tbsp
• Pineapple juice (extracted from fresh pineapple) - 2 cups
• Saffron strands - few
• Cardamom powder - 1/2 tsp

PREPARATION

• Combine pineapple juice and sugar into one pot. Bring it to boil and simmer on low flame.
• Add cardamom powder and mix well
• Meanwhile combine paneer, all purpose flour, semolina and saffron strands soaked into 1 tbsp of milk. Knead well to form soft dough.
• Divide the dough into small portion and make small balls out of it. Paneer balls expand to double the size after boiling so make  make small balls with paneer .
• Now add these balls into boiling pineapple syrup.
• Cook for 15 minutes on medium to low flame. Turn off the flame
•  This can be served as it is or chilled. 

Tip

• You can make the paneer from the scratch. I used paneer for the quick version.
• Do not discard remaining pineapple syrup, give can make drink out of it.

Ras Malai

Earlier I had posted Angoor rabdi, which is closely resembles like Rasmalai . Both are the well known sweets of North India and most popular sweets of West Bengal. Rasmalai is prepared with rasgulla and sweetened thick milk that is called Ras. This combination makes the wonderful mouthwatering sweets. And taste great when served chilled. This sweet is not at all difficult to do, with little patience in no time you can make this recipe. So lets see How to make this Rasmalai.

INGREDIENTS

Ingredients for  Flattened Cheese balls

• Whole Milk - 2 cups
• Lemon juice - 3 tbsp
• Sugar - 1/2 cup
• Water - 2  cups

Ingredients for Ras (Thickened Milk)

• Whole milk - 3 cups
• Sugar - 1/2 cup (adjust as per your taste)
• Cardamom powder - 1 tsp
• Pistachios,chopped - 10 (To garnish)

PREPARATION

For Making Flattened Cheese Balls

• Pour the milk into heavy bottomed pan and bring it boil on medium flame.
• Stir continuously to avoid the burning of the milk at the bottom.
• When the milk comes to boil, lower the flame and slowly add the lemon juice into the milk.Stir gently.
• You will see the milk starting curdling.Then turn off the flame.
• Drain the cheese from the whey using the cheese cloth or muslin cloth.
• Rinse the cheese that is collected into the muslin cloth using the cold water, to take out the taste of the lemon from the cheese.
• Now squeeze out all the water from the cheese and press it under any heavy weight to remove any remaining water from the cheese atleast for 1 hour.
• After 1 hour,take out all the cheese on the clean plate. Knead it atleast for 4 to 5 minutes to make a soft dough.
• Divide the cheese dough into 10 to 12 flattened cheese balls.
• In one pot, combine the water and sugar and keep it to boil.
• When the mixture comes to the rolling boil, lower the flame and add all the cheese balls into the mixture.
• Boil the cheese balls into the mixture for 10 to 12 minutes.
• The cheese balls will be double in their size after cooking into the syrup.
• Take out all the cheese balls from the syrup,squeeze them a little and keep it aside.

For Making Ras

• Pour the milk into one large pot and boil it on the medium flame.
• Stir continuously and cook till the milk reduces to half of its original quantity.
• Add the sugar and chopped pistachios .Stir well and cook  for 10  minutes.
• Then add cheese balls ..Let it cook for few minutes.
• Now mix in the cardamom powder .
• Garnish with chopped pistachios and serve chill.

Angoor Rabdi - Celebration Of My 100th Post

Hello Friends...Today its a lovely day for me as I am celebrating my 100th blog post. I just can't believe it. Few months before I had started my new blog and today it has hit the century.....Cheers!!!
The special thanks to my all blogger friends who visited my blog and appreciated me on my hardwork by their lovely and valuable comments.
At the same time I want to wish everyone "A Happy Father's Day".
HAPPY FATHER"S DAY to my papa.  
And here is the special treat on two special occasions....
Angoor Rabdi is the famous North Indian sweets. This is made with cheese balls, cooked into hot boiling sugar syrup and then soaked into thicken milk,known as Rabdi.  Angoor Rabdi is very much similar to popular Bengali sweet Ras Malai ,but here paneer balls are of grape size for this recipe and this is the reason it's different from Ras malai. So lets start with the recipe.


INGREDIENTS

Ingredients for Angoor (Cheese balls)

• Whole Milk - 2 cups
• Lemon juice - 3 tbsp
• Sugar - 1/2 cup
• Water - 2  cups

Ingredients for Rabdi

• Whole milk - 3 cups
• Sugar - 1/2 cup (adjust as per your taste)
• Cardamom powder - 1 tsp
• Saffron strands - 1/2 tsp
• Pistachios,chopped - 10
• Almonds,sliced - To garnish

PREPARATION

For Making Angoor Rabdi

• Pour the milk into heavy bottomed pan aand bring it boil on medium flame.
• Stir continuously to avoid the burning of the milk at the bottom.
• When the milk comes to boil, lower the flame and slowly add the lemon juice into the milk.Stir gently.
• You will see the milk starting curdlling.Then turn off the flame.
• Drain the cheese from the whey using the cheese cloth or muslin cloth.
• Rinse the cheese that is collected into the muslin cloth using the cold water, to take out the taste of the lemon from the cheese.
• Now squeeze out all the water from the cheese and press it under any heavy weight to remove any remaining water from the cheese atleast for 1 hour.
• After 1 hour,take out all the cheese on the clean plate. Knead it atleast for 4 to 5 minutes to make a soft dough.
• Divide the cheese dough into 16 to 17 tiny balls (angoors).
• In one pot, combine the water and sugar and keep it to boil.
• When the mixture comes to the rolling boil, lower the flame and add all the tiny balls(angoors) into the mixture.
• Boil the angoors into the mixture for 10 to 12 minutes.
• The angoors will be double in their size after cooking into the syrup.
• Take out all the angoors from the syrup,squeeze them a little and keep it aside.

For Making Rabdi

• Soak the saffron strand into about 2 tbsp of milk. Keep it aside.
• Pour the milk into one large pot and boil it on the medium flame.
• Stir continuously and cook till the milk reduces to half of its original quantity.
• Add the sugar and chopped pistachios .Stir well and cook  for 10  minutes.
• Then add angoors.Let it cook for few minutes.
• Now mix in the cardamom powder and saffron mixture.
• Garnish with sliced almonds.and serve chill.