Roshogolla

The High Cook

2022-08-28

What do you need?

• Milk
• Sweetner:
  • Palm Jaggery, Palm Sugar, Mollasses or Sugar, in order of preference
• Curdling agent:
  • Lemon Juice from fresh lemon or any other
• Special utensil/tool
  • A cheesecloth or similar to remove excess water from cottage cheese

How to cook

Boil substantial amount of milk in low to medium heat. Keep on removing the cream from top. Once boiled, lower the heat and add the curdling agent and stir. The milk will curdle. Turn off the heat. Pour the curdled milk on a cheesecloth (Or any other cloth that you can use) and strain it. You can use the water for other purpose (making dough etc.). Wrap the cheese in the cloth and tighten it as much as possible i.e. squeeze and extract as much liquid as possible. You can wash it if you don’t want the smell of curdling agent (recommended). Then extract the water again. Even hang it for few hours so that most of the water drains out. Some people keep a weight on top of it to do so. If there’s any water left, it will not turn out well.

Please note that despite being cottage cheese, it is not paneer. The texture and hardness differs. This one feels like soft dough. Kneed well. You can add a little cornflour (Or anything tasteless to help bind, but it is not necessary). Make small balls of the cheese.

To make the syrup, add the sweetner in generous amount to water and boil. Drop a few of the cheeze balls in the syrup and cook. They should fluff up and double in size without breaking. Once they fluff up, you can take them out. If they break, if means that the cheese was not squeezed enough. In such case, you need to start over from squeezing part.

Serving Tips

Serve along with the syrup in bowl. While freshly made, warm ones are a delight, they can also be served cold (refrigerated).

Eating Tips

Eating with spoon is fine. But traditional way is to take one ball out of the syrup using your thumb, index and middle finger. Then squeeze it a little. This will squeeze out excess syrup but retain some amount. Then put the whole roshogolla in the mouth and relish it.