Nolen Gurer Roshogulla
A few winters back we were introduced to a much sought after delicacy. Roshogulla themselves are delicious and they are much commonly found these days as the satin white balls of desserts soaked with clear syrup. They are delicious and the flavors come mainly from the quality dairy and also from the syrup which is now most commonly prepared from processed white sugarcane sugar. But in Bengal in winters a magical product is in season.
The sap of the date palms is collected and has beautiful amber color and heady caramel sweetness and mildly toffee like flavir. You can also get hints of woody aroma to the sweetness like things one might be familiar with that are aged in oak barrels. This date palm syrup is called nolen gur and is quite perishable. It is used to make what i can imagine are insanely precious delicacies in winter. Then it is processed to make nolen gur jaggery bricks or patli gur to be used later in the year.
One of the sweets which is made special and seasonal due to this nolen gur is the roshogulla. One evening i was meeting my friends Rohit and Gayatri for eating chaat but the shop was closed. But Rohit remembered that a shop selling nolen gurer roshogulla was mighty close. That is when i had it for the first time. The roshogulla itself was better than most i had and was spongy but soft and not rubbery. And the sweetness from the nolen gur syrup that it had soaked in absorbing the flavors was not the typical flat and sharp sweetness of processed sugar but an insanely complex but subtle and well rounded sweetness from nolen gur.
Rohit i think remembers the excitement and how much i liked it the first time i tried it. When i met him the next time he stopped at the shop on his way home from work and braved probably some crazy pune city traffic and got me some nolen roshogulla. Such gestures when executed with Nolen gurer roshogullas can really win ones heart.
Maple Syrup Roshogulla
Once i returned to madison my life was again filled with what i started calling the plain or vanilla Roshogulla. I was missing the exciting avatar of the Roshogulla that i had tasted.
The local and seasonal availability of an alternate complex sugar in bengal was exploited expertly by cooks in Bengal to make their Roshogulla even more special. For us in Madison Wisconsin, we are blessed and rewarded with a sap derived sugar of a different kind. We get some really good quality maple syrup at our farmers markets and also at the local coops.
Maple syrup is also quite toffee like, woody and carmel flavored sweetner. Thus we decided to try maple syrup for making the syrup that Roshogullas soak in. We paired it with some jaggery to balance its intensity as our maple syrup grade was much intense than nolen gur. And it worked great, it created roshogullas also with more rounded sweetness and complexity with a distinct local flavor.
Making Roshogullas
As the primary flavor comes from the dairy, the roshogullas will taste better if you start with flavorful milk. We start by heating a litre of milk.
The chenna for roshogulla are curds created by introducing acid to milk. For 1 L mil we use 500 ml water mixed with 1.5 Tbsp Vinegar. The acid makes the casein curds from the milk. Heat the milk to a boil and turn off the heat. Then add the acid water mix a little at a time only giving it a gentle stir. As you add acid the curds will start forming.
Then strain the curds into a cheese cloth and wash them with the hot whey while holding the curds in cheese cloth and then with ice cold water and strain out water by wringing the cheese cloth. Then drain the water either by weighing the curds down or just hanging them for couple of hours.
The next step is to make the syrup and we made it by heating water and maple syrup. We used 4 cups water with half cup maple syrup and half cup jaggery.
Once the chenna is dried out from loss of water, to make the roshogullas we knead the chenna with the back of the hand till its not grainy and make tight small balls. We then added the balls to the hot syrup and cooked them in the water for 20 minutes covered and then lowered the heat and cooked for 20 more minutes.
After that let them cool and then can be enjoyed fresh or refrigerated.
Maple Syrup Roshogulla
- Total Time: 3 hours 10 mins
- Yield: 8 pieces 1x
Ingredients
- For Chenna:
- 1 L whole Milk
- 0.5 Litre Water Mixed with 1.5 Tbsp distilled Vinegar
- 4 cups iced water
- For Boiling Chenna:
- 0.5 cup Maple Syrup
- 0.5 cup jaggery
- 4 cups water
- Additional sweetener:
- Upto 0.5 cup Maple Syrup
Instructions
- Bring the 1L Milk to simmering Boil, then turn off the heat
- Add the 0.5 L Water and vinegar mixture quarter cup at a time and make one turn gently with wooden spoon. As the vinegar-water mixture mixes with hot milk it will start to form curds. Add all the vinegar-water mixture and this would leave large curds and seperated whey
- Strain in a cheese cloth, collecting the hot whey in a vessel
- Bring all corners of cheesecloth together and dip in hot whey to seperate curds from sticking to cheesecloth
- Then wash in the iced water to stop the cooking of the curds
- Then wring the 4 corners of cheesecloth to tie the curds in cheesecloth and keep it in a strainer and keep a small plate on top and weigh down with canned food or some other weight
- After 2 hours more whey would have drained making the curds drier. More the moisture left back in the curds, more chance that roshogullas will break.
- Knead the curds on a plate with back of your hands to remove the grainy texture. Form them into small balls without forming any cracks. We made 8 balls.
- Bring the 4 cups of water to simmer along with half cup maple syrup and half cup jaggery
- Skim the scum that could float to the top
- Then gently add the chenna/curd balls. Cover and make sure the syrup stays at a rolling simmer and cook for 20 minutes.
- If you have too much evaporation add some hot water. Else cook uncovered on slightly reduced heat for 20 more minutes
- Add the other half of maple syrup based on how sweet you like the syrup and this depends on the flavor profile of your maple syrup
- Cool down for 3 or 4 hours and enjoy
- You can refrigerate for 1 or 2 days
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 3 hours
- Category: Dessert
- Cuisine: Indian
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