Rasmalai with ricotta cheese

Making Rasmalai the traditional way is a time-consuming process and you should get each step right (paneer, rasgulla) for your rasmalai to taste yum. There's this short cut way of preparing this dessert by using Ricotta cheese. Actually, kudos to the brilliant mind who came up with the idea of making an Indian sweet with cheese. Got the recipe from my cousin. Her recipe with my modifications is what I made for Diwali and it tasted so good. Couldn't resist eating them all myself.

Ingredients:

1. Ricotta cheese - 15oz tub
2. Sugar - 1/3-1/2 cup for making the patties; about 2-3 spoons for the milk syrup
3. 2% milk - 2 cups
4. Half-and-half milk - 1 cup
5. Elachi pods - about 7,8
6. Pista and badam - handful
7. Saffron strands - a pinch

Method:

1. Boil the 2% milk in a non-stick pan on a low flame with 2 spoons sugar added. Make sure you stir the milk now and then in between so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.
2. Warm a spoon full of milk and soak the saffron strands in it. Slightly twist the strands with your fingers so that milk gets the saffron flavor and color.
3. Mix the ricotta cheese and sugar (1/3rd - 1/2 cup) in a bowl by constantly whipping with a spoon until a smooth mixture is formed.
4. Take a muffin pan and spoon the cheese mix into the cups. 15oz ricotta makes about 12 rasmalai patties. So, evenly distribute the cheese into 12 parts.
5. Cook on 350F for atleast 20 minutes in the oven. After 20min, keep pricking the pattie every 5 minutes with a toothpick until its done.
   
   
   
6. Using a spoon carefully remove the patties from the pan. They'll be quite soft, so handle them carefully lest they should break.
7. After the milk has thickened in consistency, pour in the half and half milk. Now, half and half is already enough thick. So add it towards the end of the boiling process, otherwise it would taste buttery when boiled for a long time.
8. Take some pista, badam and grind them along with elachi/cardamom to a somewhat fine powder. Add this to the boiling milk. Doing so, imparts a rich badam-milk kind of flavour to the milk. Use just a few elachi pods, rasmalai has a very subtle flavour of elachi unlike kesari or kheer.
   
   
   
9. Continue boiling the milk for about 5-10 minutes after adding the half and half. Remove from gas and let it cool. Add more sugar if needed. Add the milk containing saffron to this and stir.
10. Arrange the patties in a tray and pour the milk.
11. Sliver the remaining nuts and garnish over rasmalai.
12. Refrigerate for atleast 6 hours before serving so that the pattie absorbs the milk.

Of late, most of my posts have been centered around sweets. Now that Diwali, the last festival of this year is over, no more sweets for me until the New Year. But you know what, while making rasmalai I figured out something interesting. The pattie soon after baking tasted so much like the milk-sweet Kalakand. On the next occasion to prepare a dessert, I'll try to make Kalakand with ricotta. Till then, adios to sweets!

Chandrakanthalu

Vijaya Dasami - Dasara - Dussehra: However you call it, its a festival that marks the victory of Good over Evil. A very special festival for the Hindus in India. Dasara and Deepavali are usually spaced 3 weeks apart with Ramzan somewhere in between, before or after. So, all in all, 3 festivals to be celebrated in a short period of 1-1.5 months. The retail stores cash in on this, and put up lighting, sales banners, what not, to attract customers. Ah! Love the festive look on the market streets back in my hometown. Visakhapatnam.

While living in India, I used to look forward to these festivals since mom would feed us all those yummy delicacies. Sadly here, I got away with the Dasara celebration making just one sweet - Chandrakanthalu. Its a sweet popular in the north coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh. Kind of tastes like burelu without the crust. Looks something like this:



Oh! no.. they are not meat balls :) Made it for the first time, wasn't as good as what my aunt (who's an expert at this sweet) makes looks-wise, but taste-wise they were okay.

Ingredients:

1. Moong dal - x units
2. Sugar - x units
3. Elachi/cardamom - as required
4. Fresh Coconut - like 2 spoons for 1 cup dal
5. Oil for deep frying
   

Method:

1. Soak the moong dal for atleast 3 hours
2. Remove all the water and grind the dal to a coarse paste in a mixer. Add water in small quantities while grinding. You don't really need a smooth paste. The mistake I did was adding lot of water while grinding.
   
3. Take a thick bottom vessel and add the required quantity of sugar. Pour just sufficient water so as to cover the sugar and boil to make a sugar syrup. Again, be careful with the amount of water used in this step too.
4. Once the sugar has all melted, add the moong dal paste and cook on low flame with constant stirring. Essentially, moong dal should cook in the sugar syrup. even if you stop stirring for a moment, the dal would burn. Takes about 5 minutes for 1 cup dal to cook completely. Since its already crushed into smaller particles, the dal shouldn't take long to cook.
   
5. Once cooked, add grated coconut and elachi powder.
6. Assuming all went well, that is, you got the amount of water right, the cooked dal should have a halwa-like consistency. Pour it on a greased flat plate and cut it into small squares just like you cut mysore pak or other such sweets. The squares shouldn't be thicker than half-an-inch else when you fry, the interiors would remain raw.
   
7. Give it some time to cool.
   
8. Meanwhile heat sufficient oil in a kadai. Take out each square that you just cut and drop it in the oil. Fry until it turns golden brown and flip sides. They can burn quite quickly, so remove as and when they turn golden-to-deep brown.
9. Serve hot and crispy chandrakanthalu! This sweet is a perfect example for "no one can eat just one". Try it yourself, and you'll have to agree with me.
   

Because my moong dal paste was slightly watery, I could not cut out the cakes. So took spoonfuls of the paste and fried.

After snacking endlessly on chandrakanthalu, we decided to visit the temple. And guess what, there was this amazing "bommala koluvu" put up for public viewing. I always loved the idea of kolu but never saw one directly, since none of my friends and relatives follow this tradition. And here, in a land far far away, I got a chance to appreciate an Indian tradition. Strange, huh? Actually, even in India, if bommala koluvu is kept in temples like here, more and more people will be able to look at it. I just couldn't take my eyes off all those little dolls, they were all so cute and pretty. Mostly the kondapalli wooden toys sold in Handicrafts showrooms like Lepakshi in Andhra Pradesh. Some pictures from the Shiva-Vishnu temple, San Diego:



Signing off, looking forward to Diwali!

Happy Ugadi!!!

Dear visitors,

Wish you all a very Happy Ugadi !!!

Its a brand new year again, with an old name though - "virodhi" (meaning- enemy). Each telugu calendar year has a separate name. There are 60 such names, and the cycle of names repeats every 60 years. May "Virodhi" year bring good health and prosperity to all of us, and may this year ward off all our enemies :) By enemy, I'm not just referring to a goon with a machine gun, an enemy could be as simple as a flu virus :)

The Indian festival Ugadi is celebrated in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. For more info on Ugadi, there's wiki.

We, Andhraites, prepare a special chutney on Ugadi day. "Ugadi patchadi" is what its known as. A blend of 6 different tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy and tangy) symbolizing that life is a mixture of sweet and sad times, and one must accept them alike. As a child, I used to love this chutney that my mom made. Me and my sister would wait for the puja to get over so as to have spoonfuls of the pachadi. Its been 5 years since I last had it from amma's hands. Two years in hostel, then an year at work followed by two years in US. Though this isn't my first Ugadi after marriage, its the first time for me to celebrate it. The first year of marriage, I was a lazy little girl, who didn't know much about pujas et all :) But today, I feel so happy and satisfied after offering my prayers to God, and showing the live telecast to my folks back home in India :)

My camera has moved from the kitchen to the puja area, look at this "puja-click":

The actual ingredients that go into the making of Ugadi pachadi are:

1. Neem flowers - for the bitter taste
2. Tamarind pulp - sour
3. Jaggery - sweet
4. Chillis/chilli powder - spice
5. Raw mango - tangy
6. Salt

Since I couldn't get (1) and (5), I substituted (1) by Fenugreek powder and (5) by few drops of lemon. FYI, I'm overly flexible with what I substitute in my cooking :) Actually, I wanted to make an all jaggery pachadi, so that we won't have any bitter/sour/spice/salt/tangy experiences this year. :) But then, I thought, probably this pachadi will give us the strength to handle them all :)

The pachadi was a little too sour, otherwise okay. For the naivedyam, I made tamarind pulihora and Chakkerapongali. This particular sweet is my super-favourite since it is easy to cook, and tastes good. Posting its recipe here.

Ingredients:

1. Rice - x units
2. Moong dal - x units
3. Sugar - x units
4. Grated coconut - x/2 units
5. Cardamom powder
6. Ghee

Procedure:

1. Roast rice and dal separately in a small amount of ghee.
2. Pressure cook the roasted ingredients with 4x water.
3. When the cooked mixture is hot, add sugar, coconut and cardamom powder.
4. Can add some ghee-roasted cashew and raisins too.

The smell of ghee and cardamom filled my stomach even before offering it to God. :)

A collage I made:

Once again, wish you a Happy Ugadi !

New year, new beginnings!! May God bless us all.