Debut Recipe - Rasmalai

Here comes my first recipe. Being my first recipe for the blog, me thought of making a sweet dish, bit sentimental ;)

Thinking about sweets, Rasmalai came to my mind  first. That's because its my hubby's favourite sweet. When ever we go to India for vacation, he would make use of all the chance at any restaurant to try their rasmalai for dessert. So I decided to make this sweet for my first blog entry.

I made the dish by first making paneer, then made rasgullas out of it. These rasgullas were then squeezed out of the syrup to make rasmalai. This may sound time consuming, but with little patience and following the steps below, we can make yummy rasmalai in our kitchen starting from scratch.

Lets split up the process of making rasmalai into the following  3 stages, so that its easier for us to follow.

Preparation of Paneer
Cooking the paneer balls in sugar syrup
Making of 'malai'  - the cream base for this dish

Preparation of Paneer

Things needed
Low fat milk - 4 Cups
Lime juice    - 1/4 Cup

Pour the milk into a heavy bottom vessel. Bring it to boil. Once the milk starts to boil, turn the heat to medium flame. Now start adding the lime juice slowly. Adding lime juice will result in curdling of milk. We would be able to notice the separation of water from the curdled milk.

Curdling is said to be done, when the water that floats on the top is free from curdled milk. At this stage, immediately put off the heat and transfer the content to a strainer. Blanch the content in the strainer under cold running water. This process helps to prevent further cooking of paneer and hence avoids the rubbery texture of the paneer.

Now transfer the paneer to a clean thin cloth and squeeze out the excess water.  Wrapper the paneer in the cloth and place a heavy weight vessel over it, so that all the excess water is removed. Leave it for about 30minutes. Paneer is ready. Transfer it to a dry bowl.

Cooking of the paneer balls in sugar syrup

Things needed

Paneer
Pinch of cardamon powder
Pinch of food color(preferably lemon yellow)
Sugar - 1Cup
Water - 1Cup

Now add the cardamon powder, food color to the preapred paneer and knead it until it forms a dough. Divide the dough into medium sized balls by rolling the paneer between your palms. Make sure there is no cracks in the balls, so as to avoid any brekages during cooking in the sugar syrup. Slightly flatten the paneer ball to make them like patties, as rasmalais are usually like patties.

Now make the sugar syrup by mixing the water and sugar into a pressure cooker. When the syrup starts to boil, put the heat to medium and add the paneer patties. The patties are then cooked for 8 minutes under pressure.

Let the cooker stand off for few minutes to let pressure get released. Now open the cooker to find that the paneer patties floating in the syrup and they are almost double their size.

Cool the patties to room temperature. Then squeeze them out of the syrup carefully without breaking them. The patties are now ready to be soaked in the malai.

Making the 'malai'

The last step in making rasmalai is to make the 'malai', by boiling the milk to soak in the prepared paneer balls.

Things need
Low fat milk - 2 Cups
Sugar - 1.5 Cups
Sliced almonds
Saffron threads

Now boil the milk with sugar in a heavy bottom vessel in medium flame until the milk reduces to half of its original quantity. Add the sliced almonds, saffron threads and the paneer patties into the malai. Rasmalai is ready to be served chilled.

With all this effort, it was great to hear that single word 'WOW!!' from my hubby, who really enjoyed my rasmalais. We afterall cook for our loved ones.. :)