Roshogolla or Rasgulla

Bengal is and always has been famous for its sweets. And Roshogollas and the Bongs go hand in hand! There are many a variety of Bengali sweets, each delicious & exotic, heavenly to taste. But for reasons unknown to me, the Roshogolla or rasgulla is the face of Bengali sweets and confectionary.

In our household, the father-daughter duo of SD & AD are the quintessential Bong sweet lovers. Living away from Bengal, the greatest disadvantage of the true blue Bong, is the lack of availability of authentic Roshogolla. And the tinned ones are a poor substitute. So it is for them, that I often become adventurous and try my hand at the roshogollas and Sandesh.
So here it goes..the simplest Roshogolla recipe:

Ingredients :All measures are for 1 litre milk which yielded 20 medium sized RoshogollasMilk – full cream – 1 Litre
Lemon juice of 2 lemons
Maida – 2 tsp
Elaichi /cardamom powder
Nokuldana (Sweet globules) - 20 nos. OR sugar – 2 tsp
Sugar syrup made with Sugar : Water ratio = 1:2. I used 3.5 cups (250ml) cups of sugar and 7 cups of water.

Process :

1. Boil the milk. Add the lemon juice to make fresh Chhana (home made cottage cheese).
2. Squeeze the water out by putting it in a clean cheese cloth and rinsing it.
3. Knead the chhana as you knead atta/maida. The chhana should become very soft and pliable and your hand must feel oily. The trick to make soft roshogollas lies in this step of kneading. The better your knead, the tastier will be the roshogollas.

4. After the chhana dough is smooth and soft, add 2 tsp of maida to it. Mix the maida with the chhana by  kneading.
5. Add a tsp of elaichi powder to remove the lemony taste of the chhana. Keep in mind that the elaichi should be just sufficient to nullify the lemony taste but should not give its strong elaichi flavor to the chhana
6. To make the sugar syrup, in a pressure cooker, add the sugar and water in 1:2 ratio and let it come to a boil
7. Divide the chhana dough, into 18-20 globules.
8. Take each pinched off chhana piece, and make it into a globule by rolling it between your palms. Push in a nokuldana or a pinch of sugar into the centre of the globule. Again by rolling it between your palms, smoothen the globule surface,
9. The size of the globules should be half of what you want your roshogolla size to be.
10.While you are doing steps 8 & 9, the sugar-water mix may have come to a boil.
11. Add the globules into the boiling syrup. Close the lid of the pressure cooker.
12. Let a whistle blow. Lower the flame and cook for another 10 minutes on low flame. Switch off the gas. Let the steam come out of the pressure cooker on its own.
13. The spongy white spheres of roshogollas are ready. You can have them hot or refrigerate them and have them chilled. The choice is all yours!

This is my entry to WYF:Cuisine and the logo for the event is