Rasgulla

I made Rasgulla and Rasmalai for this Deepawali. Though i know the procedure, i didnt try out at home, as i thought i need to do it with muslin or cheese cloth only. But after seeing the Rasgulla's from Rajeshwari's Raks Kitchen, i could not postpone trying them out. She made the rasgulla's with her dhupatta itself and it inspired me a lot. Believe it or not, i made the rasgulla's with white cotton Kerchief and it came out well.

Here goes the recipe....

Ingredients

• Milk - 1 litre
• Lemon juice/Vinegar - 3 tsp
• Sugar - 2 cups
• Cardamom - 3 (crushed) (optional)
• Water - 6 cups

Method

• Boil the milk.
• With lemon juice / Vinegar add 2 tsp of water and dilute it.
• While the milk is boiling, add the diluted vinegar and mix well.
• Stir the boiling milk so that the milk starts curdling.
• Keep on stirring, till the water separates fully from the milk.
• With the help of the metal strainer, covered with Cheese/Muslin/Cotton Dhuppatta/Cotton Kerchief filter the curdled milk, under the running water.
• Wash it well to remove the smell of vinegar/lemon juice.
• Now cover the curdled milk with kerchief and just twist as much as you can in order to remove the water from it. 

• If the water didnt strain fully, just fill the cooker or heavy bottom pan with water and keep this on the Curdled milk covered with cloth.
• Leave it for 30 to 40 min.

• Meanwhile, make sugar syrup with 1 cup sugar, 2 cup water and cardamom (no need for string consistency). Just make the syrup, till the sugar dissolves.
• Keep this syrup in fridge.

• Now remove the paneer from it and smash well till it becomes like a dough to make small balls.
• Now in a pressure cooker, add 1 cup sugar and 4 cup water and bring to boil.

• Add the paneer balls into it and close the lid. Wait for 1 whistle and make the burner to low flame. Leave it for 7 to 10 minutes and switch off the stove.

• Remove the Rasgullas and transfer it to the cooled sugar syrup and serve it.

[Note: Since i planned to make rasmalai also with these rasgulla's, i made two sugar syrup as i dont want the rasgulla's to be too sweet for rasmalai. So you can use the sugar syrup that is used to pressure cook the rasgulla's by adding one more cup of sugar to it. Then cool the rasgullas by refridgerating them and serve cool]

Sending this to the following wonderful events
1. CMT - Mithai by Mina Joshi and Jagruthi
2. Celebrate Sweets - Bengali sweets by PJ and Nivedita
3. Diwali Sweets n Snacks by Lavi