Pantua | Bengali style Gulab jamun

This month is my blog's anniversary. I started this blog with just the intention of penning down my recipes and have been successfully doing so for the past 5 years. But now seems like I cannot live without this blog and my fellow marathoners. But the blog has not taken the top priority in my life. This year thanks to blogging marathon I have posted the highest number of recipes for a year. I can try to make it a century by december. 

For this week's blogging marathon I have picked up Diwali special sweets and savouries. Last month during the mega marathon my fellow marathoners presented many sweet recipes and I had bookmarked almost all of them. I picked up a bengali style sweet to start with - Pantua. Valli had posted this recipe and she has said in length about this bengali style gulab jamun and how this differs from the traditional gulab jamun that we make. Though I knew that gulab jamuns are made from khoya and all purpose flour; I have always tried it only with the MTR - gulab jamun mix. This time after seeing Vallis post I was tempted to make these jamuns and they turned out really yummy. 

I made very small balls and with the chana of about 4 litres milk; I got close to 30 balls. We all loved them and I also distributed these to friends and relatives. The effort involved is quite huge when compared with making with MTR mix but the taste is just out of the world and also the special feeling that you made it entirely by yourself.

Ingredients

Chana:

Milk - 4 litres

Lemon Juice - 4 tsp

Water as required

Sugar Syrup:

Sugar

Water

Cardamom powder

Saffron

Pantua:

Paneer / Chhana well kneaded - 1 cup 

Khoya - 2 tbsp 

A Pinch of Baking powder

All Purpose Flour / Maida - 1 tbsp 

Ghee - 1 tbsp 

Cooking Oil for deep frying

Method:

Prepare the chana

• Have the lemon juice ready at hand.
• Have a bowl lined with a muslin cloth and keep it ready.
• In a thick bottom pan, boil the milk till it boils over, simmer for 5 mins.
• Remove it from flame, add the lemon juice slowly and gently stir for the cheese to separate.
• When you see greenish water, pour the entire content over the muslin cloth to gather the cheese.
• Pour water over the cheese couple of times to remove traces of lemon 
• Gather the edges of the cloth to tie the cloth and let it drain completely.
• Ensure that the chhana is not completely dry.

For the sugar syrup

• Take the sugar with water and let the sugar melt and remove the impurities if any. Then boil the sugar with the water till one string consistency is reached. 
• This will take about 8-10 minutes. The syrup should be thick like how you make for gulab jamun.
• Add cardamom powder and saffron to this sugar syrup and keep it aside.

For the Pantua

• Take the crumbled paneer on a plate and with your heel, knead till there are no coarse grains or lumps and the Chenna becomes very soft.
• Add the khoya, flour, ghee, baking powder to the soft chhana and knead it for nearly 10-12 minutes or till it starts releasing oil to make a smooth textured dough. 
• In this stage, we must start with little flour and add as we go on kneading depending on how stiff the chhana becomes.
• Cover the bowl and keep it aside for 30 minutes and divide the mixture into equal sized balls.
• Heat a kadai with oil and reduce the flame when it reaches smoking point.
• Gently drop the balls and fry on medium flame till golden brown.
• Drain the Pantua and soak them in the prepared warm sugar syrup for 2-3 hours.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#81