Shubho Naboborshe Mishti Mukh with Pantua!

(Wish you all a Happy Bengali New Year on a sweet note)

Wish you all a very Happy Bengali New Year!
As a food obsessed community, what better way to usher in our New Year (Naboborsho) than to enjoy a bhuribhoj (a feast) with friends and family.

No Bong bhuribhoj ever culminates without the sweet endings or for that matter, no Bong festivity, function or gathering is ever successful without the presence of at least some form of sweetdish or mishti!

Before I continue further, I must must apologise for the sudden hiatus, unanswered mails and lack of response. I was hibernating! From the blogging world and from the net in general. Of course, could enjoy the hibernation only on the personal front, coz abstinence from net on the professional front would have meant harakiri.

So here I am with Pantua, a kind of Gulab Jamun where Chhana (home made cottage cheese) and khoya (thickened & almost dried milk) are used as raw materials.



Ingredients :
*Milk - 2 litres full cream milk
*Khoya - 200-250 gms (approximately)
*Lemon - 1 large or 2 small to curdle the milk
*Black cardamom-3
*Misri (candy sugar)/nokul dana-a handful
*Sugar : water in 1:1 ratio
*Maida / refined flour - 2-3 tbsp
*Refined Oil - 1-2 tsp
*Baking powder - 1 tsp
*Refined oil for frying

Procedure :
1. Make paneer/chhana/Chhena from 2 litres full cream milk by boiling the milk and squeezing in the juice of one big/ two small lemon/s in it. Yield from 2 litres milk is about400-500gm chhana.

2. For preparing khoya (which I made in advance...it's awfully time consuming!), I boiled about 1.5 litres full cream mail on low flame till all that remained was milk solids. The last 1/2 hour was troublesome when constant stirring was required to ensure the residues did not get burnt and at the same time the solids were spluttering like mini crackers

3. Mash the chhana into a smooth paste and then add the khoya to this and continue to mash till the mixture is smooth

4. Take about 2-3 tbsp of maida and mix 2-3 tsp of refined oil with it. mix it well.

5. Now add this maida+oil mix, 1 tsp of baking powder, black cardamom paste to the chhana-khoya mix. Knead well to make a soft dough.

6. Make small balls out of the dough. Take each ball, press and make a depression in its centre with your finger. Put a seed of black cardamom and one grain of misri or nokul dana in the depression and remake the ball by rolling it in your palms.

7. To make the Sugar syrup, boil 3 cups of water with 3 cups of sugar (sugar:water ratio=1:1). The syrup should be thicker than rasgulla syrup but not too thick. If it's too thick, add some more water and bring to a boil again.

8. Deep fry the balls in oil on low to medium flame to ensure that even the insides are well cooked.

9. Dunk the fried balls into the hot sugar syrup. Let the balls soak in the syrup for about 1/2 hour before the PANTUAS are ready to eat!


Note:As I had been off blogging for so long, completelt forgot to take in process & ingredient pics. Hence please bear with pics of only the finished product!