Making Rosogolla

This is one thing I never tried before. Yesterday was Kumar Purnima(The full moon after Dussera). This day is celebrated in Orissa with much fanfare. Often all the kids get new clothes, roam around and get some extra pocket money. When we were growing up - my mom told us in our family we did not have Kumar Purnima, so no new clothes for us this day(I think she tricked us :)). I did not remember celebrating this festival while growing up, but now in grown ups world, I see a lot of enthusiasm about this day. So, bitten by Kumar Purnima bug, I thought let me do something special today that I have not done before. One big challenge seemed like was to make rosogolla. I have heard many horrible stories about this - as how this is very hard to make and it never come out well, it is very time consuming etc etc...So, undeterred by these discouraging remarks I plunged into the foray.

So, here is what I did. I poured half a gallon milk into a pot and put it on stove. I had 3 small lemons. I squeezed all of them, but the entire milk did not seem like breaking. Then I added 2 additional big lemon juice to it. Instantly the milk separated into solid and liquid components. I boiled the whole thing for 5 more minutes, then strained the milk through a porous cheese cloth. Then I tied the cheese inside the cloth and put some heavy weight on it for water to drain put completely. In 4-5 hours all the visible water residues were gone. Then I knead the dough from the cheese. While doing this make sure that it makes a fine dough without any granule dripping out of it. At the same time in a pot I boiled some water and added some sugar and cardamon into it. When the sugar is almost mixed with water, I made small balls out of the dough and put them into the boiling sugar syrup. I allowed it to boil for about 20 minutes. The small balls almost doubled in size.. There you go rasagolla is ready.

Few key points to remember:

1. After making the cheese and before draining water always wash it in water, so that the lemony taste goes away(I did not do it).
2. Try full milk instead of low fat milk.
3. Don't use Ricota cheese for this purpose.
4. Make good dough so that the rosogolla balls don't melt away in water.

I realized one thing very recently is to pressure cook rasagola to make it soft.