This a bengali sweet dish, which is prepared from milk. The beauty of this dish is that it requires extremely few ingredients, made with a very simple process, tastes heavenly while being wonderful for your health. Let’s start with the recipe…
Kachchagola Kesar Sandesh
Made from fresh milk, and just 3 other ingredients, one of the most healthy and nutritious dessert.
- 1 Liter Milk (Full cream preferred )
- 1 tbsp Lemon Juice (Can use vinegar, alum also)
- 125 grams Powdered sugar (if bura is available, use that instead)
- 20 strands Saffron (Approx 20-30 strands will give good color and flavor)
Soak saffron in 2 spoon milk for 1 hour. You can leave for upto 3-4 hours, after that it starts to loose its aroma slowly.
Bring milk to boil and remove from heat.
Curdle milk using one of the acidic ingredient.
Once you see the light green water separated and large grains of paneer formed, cool down the mixture immediately using ice or cold water and drain. wash once more to remove any flavor of lemon left, and drain the water.
Tie the chhenna in muslin cloth and keep under heavy weight for about 2 hours. It will secrete the moisture from chhenna.
Now knead the chhenna in a bowl for about 5 minutes until it becomes smooth, add sugar and kesar milk and mix properly.
Make balls about the size of gulab jamun and refrigerate. Serve chilled.
Technically these can last for 3-4 days, but in my house it does'nt last for more than 10 minutes 😉
Full cream and fresh milk gives best result. Trick is to get fresh milk and use immediately.
The whey water after curdling milk can be stored and used for making dough for roti. It can be used for 2-3 days, when refrigerated. It can also be used instead of lemon juice to make paneer.
One of my Halwai friend has said that this whey water is to be only used for making chhenna for rasgulla, otherwise expect them to stay flat.
If your guests called you that they are arriving in about an hour’s time, and you are wondering what to make, look for no other option, just head over with Sandesh.
This recipe can be personalized with tweak in ingredients which will make them taste whole lot different from each other. Just to give you a hint, replace sugar and saffron with rose sharbat, and you have rose sandesh or replace saffron with elaichi and pistachios and see the wonder.
