Showing posts with label ICC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ICC. Show all posts

Saturday, May 15, 2010

ICC April Challenge : Rasmalaai

Rasmalaai is a traditional South-Asian sweet. Rasmalaai consists of soft, spongy flattened balls of Paneer floating in sweet condensed milk which is delicately flavoured.

So this month's Indian Cooking Challenge , a monthly event by Srivalli of Spicing Your Life, was this lip-smacking Rasmalaai.

It was the first time I was trying to make Rasmalaai at home. And to my surprise it was dam easy to make. And so delicious that my children also relished eating them. I was floating in the heavens seeing the soft spongy balls of Paneer floating on the Ras.

Making Rasmalaai is a easy, step by step process. First step is to make the flattened Paneer Balls. The next step is to soak them in sugar syrup. And the final step is to prepare the condensed slightly sweetened milk.

Let us have a look at the recipe now.

Ingredients:


Milk - 3 litres (2 litres for making paneer and 1 litre for making Rasa/Condensed Milk)
Vinegar- 3 tbsps
Water-5 cup
Sugar- 16 tbsp (8 for Sugar Syrup and 8 for Rasa/Milk Syrup)
Saffron- 8 pieces
Pista-10 finely chopped
Maida flour- 1 tsp
Cardamon-2 (crushed)

Method:


Ist step : Preparation of Paneer

IInd step : Preparation of Sugar Syrup

IIIrd step : Preparation of Milk Syrup/Rasa


I. Preparation of Paneer :

Boil 2 litres of milk. When the milk boils, add vinegar. wait for a minute or two. the paneer will start floating on top and the whey water will stay on the bottom of the vessel. Now with a muslin or a cotton cloth, filter the paneer and pour 2 cups of water on it, to remove the sourness of vinegar and then tie it well and let it hang on for one hour, till the whey water drops out and squeeze them well. Now transfer the paneer to a broad vessel and knead it to make a soft spongy dough. Knead it atleast for about 5 minutes or till there is not much of moisture content left in it. Now add a spoon of maida flour to the paneer and make small flattened ball. Keep the size little small since it will almost double its size in the sugar syrup.


Do not throw away the whey water, let it get soured for about 1 week. After that pour it into a bottle and refrigerate it. This soured whey water will be good for one year of time. When you want to make paneer, you can use this whey water instead of vinegar/lemon juice.



II. Preparation of Sugar Syrup:

In a wide-bottomed pressure cooker, add three cups of water and eight table spoons of sugar. Now when it boils, add the paneer balls one at a time. If you have kneaded well the paneer, the balls will not break. Let it get pressure cooked for 10 minutes in slow flame or for 2 whistles.

After the steam is relaesed open the cooker. The Paneer balls would have doubled in size. Slightly press each and every ball to remove the excess sugar syrup.


III. Preparation of Condensed Milk/Rasa:

When you are starting to prepare sugar syrup. start making milk syrup/rasa side by side. Have one litre of milk in a wide bottomed vessel and let it boil and get reduced into half of the quantity. Add eight table spoons of sugar and mix well. Add saffron and crushed cardoman to it and mix well. Put the paneer ball's into the rasa/milk syrup. Cool it down and refregirate it.

Serve with chopped pistachios on top. Though the process looks long when written down, its very easy and worth a try.


Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Indian Cooking Challenge > March > Sago Murukku

Writing a recipe post after a very long time.  Feels good.

When I read Srivalli's Indian Cooking Challenge (ICC) for this month, I was a bit confused. Is this recipe going to workout for me? Or is it going to end in a disaster. After giving so many thoughts at last I gathered the courage to after all give the recipe a try.

And to my amazement it came out excellent. Children and hubby liked it a lot.

Normally we do not add Sago to murukku. Since there is always a chance of bursting fire crackers in the kitchen. It was totally new to me.



Coming to the recipe. The recipe had called for the following ingredients.
  1. Rice Flour - 2 cups
  2. Besan / Kadalai Maavu - 1/2 cup
  3. Fried Gram Flour / Pottu Kadalai Maavu - 1/2 cup
  4. Sago / Javvarisi - 1/2 cup
  5. Curd - 1/4 cup
  6. Red Chilli Powder - to taste (about 1/2 tsp should be enough)
  7. Salt to taste
  8. Oil - 50 gms (about 1/2 a cup) (for adding in the flour)
  9. Oil for deep frying
Method :
  1. Soak the sago for about 3 hrs in buttermilk. The Sago should be well immersed in buttermilk, since it absorbs the liquid in the process of soaking. So there should be enough of buttermilk.
  2. Mix all the other ingredients in a large bowl and also add the buttermilk soaked sago. To this add 50 gms hot oil. And knead to make a dough of the consistency of chapathi dough.             
  3. Heat oil for frying. Press the dough into the hot oil with the help of Murukku Achu.
  4. Cook on medium flame so that the Murukku gets cooked well.

Important Notes:

Please see to it that the sago gets soaked well. You may soak for more hours but ensure that the sago is soaked very well. It becomes very soft after getting soaked. Since this will avoid fire crackers in the kitchen.

What I did was I soaked the sago in normal water instead of soaking it in buttermilk. I soaked it for almost about half a day. I added curd while preparing the dough.


Note : Please participate in the event Tried & Tasted (T&T) : Sailu's Food going on here. Last date to recieve the entries 30th April.

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