Ende Kushini

Monday, 22 May 2017

Rasgulla

The second sweet recipe for this weeks marathon is rasgulla - the spongy white balls famous from our very own Kolkatta. Of course this one is also favourite with my mother.

The dessert is known as Rosogolla or Roshogolla in Bengali and Rasagola in Odia. Rasgulla is derived from the words ras ("juice") and gulla ("ball").Other names for the dish include Roshgulla (Sylheti), Rasagulla, Rossogolla, Roshogolla, Rasagola, Rasagolla, and Rasbhari or Rasbari (source: wikipedia)

The spongy white rasgulla is believed to have been introduced in present-day West Bengal in 1868 by a Kolkata-based confectioner named Nobin Chandra Das. Das started making rasgulla by processing the mixture of chhena and semolina in boiling sugar syrup in contrast to the mixture sans semolina in the original rasgulla in his sweet shop located at Sutanuti (present-day Baghbazar). His descendants claim that his recipe was an original, but according to another theory, he modified the traditional Odisha rasgulla recipe to produce this less perishable variant.

I am not a big fan of rasgullas but everyone at home likes it. I just read some blogs and tried it out. The result was awesome…

Ingredients

Milk (full cream) - 1 Litre

Lemon juice - 2 tbsp

Sugar - 2 cups

Water - 3 &1/2 cups

Elachi powder- 1 pinch

Ice cubes - 12

Nuts (optional) - For garnish

Method:

Heat the milk,when it start to boil,simmer the flame, add the lemon juice slowly as you stir.
Switch off the flame once the whey water clearly separates.
Add the Ice cubes and mix well.
Take a metal strainer,lined with a cheese cloth/muslin cloth (I used my dupatta). Pour the curdled milk in it.
Wash it well in the running water under the tap to remove the lemon smell and sourness.
Let the water drain and hang this chenna for 30 minutes. I just slightly squeezed the excess water.
After 1/2 hour,take out the chenna in a bowl.I will be now more like a crumble look wise.
Now knead this for 7-10 minutes gently to make it like a soft and smooth dough.
Make smooth equal sized small balls. I made some 20 balls.
Take sugar,cardamom powder and water in a pressure cooker and boil it.
After the sugar gets dissolved completely and the syrup boils, add the balls made carefully one by one.
Cover the pressure cooker and cook it till you get one whistle in medium flame. After a whistle, keep for another 5 minutes in low flame.
Put off the flame and let the pressure gets released by itself,then open the lid to see the rasgullas – by now it would have doubled in size. If you think the sugar syrup is too thin and not sweet enough, boil again in low flame until you get desired thickness of the syrup.

Note:

ice cubes are added to stop the curdling at that instant. It prevents the chenna to become hard and helps for soft texture.
The kneading part is very important,knead smooth and soft with patience.
Do not squeeze the water manually forcefully, you can do little gently but not more.
Do not cook in high flame in pressure cooker. It will break the rasgullas.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#76

Wednesday, 17 May 2017

Kumbhil Appam

This blogging marathon I am starting with some sweets to celebrate Mother's Day!! I don't think a particular day is needed to celebrate Mother or for that reason any other relation. You need to keep expressing your love for others in every deed that you do. Simple na.. But thinking deeply a mother's relation is different in the sense it is the first relation a human makes as soon as they are out in this world. All the rest of the relations including the father is made through the mother. Ah so much of philosophy .... doesn't feel like me. Over to today's recipe

Today I am posting a traditional Kerala sweet made with jaggery, rice flour and jackfruit. My mom is a huge fan of Jackfruit, so this sweet is definitely her favorite and a little of diabetes-friendly too since this is made of jaggery.

The name 'Kumbil Appam' of this dish is because of the shape of the Appam. Kumbu meant for the 'cone' shape of this appam. This Kumbilappam is totally flavoured by the wrap used in this appam vazhana Ila/ Therali Ila/ Indian Bay leaf. The strong smell of the leaves enter into the appam while steaming and gives a amazing flavour to this dish. I found this tree standing tall in the land we bought recently. It is easy to make this dish in a jiffy if you have appam podi/ roasted rice flour at your home. One can keep this appam for 2 days if you prepare with fresh coconut. If you planned to used it more than that roast the coconut and use it for 5-6 days.

Ingredients:

Chakka Varatti/ Jack fruit Preserve - 1/2 cup

Jaggery- 1/2 cup

Water- 1/4 cup

Coconut- 1/2 cup

Roasted Rice flour/ Appam Podi- 1 cup

Cumin seeds/ Jeera, crushed- 1/4 teaspoon

Dried ginger/ chukku, powdered- 1/2 teaspoon

Cardamom- 1/4 teaspoon

Vazhana Ila/ Edana Ila/ Indian Bay leaves- 7-8

Method:

Take Jaggery in a pan and add quarter cup of water and heat it and make syrupy consistency. (string consistency- If you drop the syrup from spoon last drop has to form string. If you touch the syrup in between fingers it should form a string)
In a bowl take chakka varatti and add the warm syrup over the chakka varatti and mix well to combine without any lumps.
Powder the jeera and cardamom seeds. Roast the coconut till light golden colour. (To avoid spoilage. If you are consuming on the same day rosting is not necessary).
In another bowl add the rice flour, jeera and cardamom powder, dried ginger/ chukku powder and roasted coconut and mix evenly.
Now add a tablespoon at a time rice flour mixture to the chakka varatti jaggery mixture and mix well.
Likewise add the whole lot. Finally the mixture should not stick to your hands if you touch with fingers. If it is sticky add a tablespoon or two of roasted rice flour and mix well.
Wash the Bay leaves and wipe them. Make a cone shape out of the leaves and pin it using coconut picks (Eerkil) or tooth picks.
Fill the cones with chakka mixture till top.
Heat water inside Idli steamer and allow to boil. Keep the Idli base plate and spread the filled cones.
Close with the lid and steam for about 15 minutes. Cooking time varies depends on the sizes of the cones.

Serve hot!! Enjoy kumbil appam when it is pouring outside !!

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#76

Wednesday, 3 May 2017

26 days of baking around the world

Though this is the second time I am participating in a marathon for baking, I enjoyed this a lot more and also learned from this marathon a lot more. Now I am confident of baking breads and buns. Next I should try cakes I guess.

This marathon the following were the specialities

Did different varieties of breads, buns and cookies.
Tried recipes from 20 different places.
Tried shaping breads for the first time like snail, petals etc.
Used a lot of new spices like the zaatar spice mix, oregano spice mix, till/sesame seeds in breads etc
found many new varieties of stuffed bread which would be a good choice for picnics.

When this marathon started I was ready with only 3 posts. But somehow I had the courage and confidence to go ahead with the marathon since I had the list of recipes ready. I actually learned efficient time management and effective planning by doing this mega marathon. I planned my breakfast mostly around these recipes and the evening snacks also. For the last few recipes I missed buying few essential ingredients since they were not available near my place of stay. But that didn't affect the final product much. Overall I am very much satisfied with my performance in this mega marathon. The only flaw is I haven't commented on the posts of my fellow bloggers.

I should have suggested Valli to have some detox diet or something similar for the next month after devouring all these butter filled goodies..

A for Aghi Gesgoudz from Armenia