Chena Sondesh/Curdle Milk Fudge – A Guest Post for Roxana @ A Little Bit Of Everything

Kankana | September 14, 2011

When I offered these to Arvind, he said ‘did you get these from the sweet shop’? I was on cloud 9 and kept blabbering about it to everybody for the next two days

Sondesh or Sandesh, as you may call it, is sweet fudge made with milk and it is very popular among Bengalis. It’s usually made during special occasions and at times, just because we want to eat it. You don’t have to struggle much to look for Sondesh in West Bengal. Every restaurant, big or small, and every single sweet shop will sell one or the other variety of Sondesh. Trust me when I say this, you will never get tired of these delicious and soft sweet bites.

Roxana from ‘A Little Bit Of Everything‘ requested me to do a guest post and she was hoping if I could share some comfort food with memories from childhood. I did say ‘Yes’ and then immediately started wondering ‘what is my comfort food from childhood’?

Don’t get me wrong.. I don’t have amnesia. It’s just that as a child, I hardly use to enjoy food and eating was more like a torture to me.

Roxana, who is also popularly known as Green-girl, is a happily married, stay at home mom who lives in central Virginia with her family. Her blog is filled with delicious recipes and one thing that will catch your attention is her ability to bake breads. Some interesting posts that I enjoyed reading a lot were on yeast, blogging and comments :)

I really don’t remember what was my comfort food as a kid, but I clearly remember that my Mom used to make Sondesh very frequently. Mom’s Sondesh was very famous among our friends and families and she used to make that with ‘Khoya’. Making khoya at home is a very tedious task. The milk has to be thickened by slow cooking and constant stirring in an open wok. The whole process used to take at-least 2 hours but the final result was always worth the effort.

She would then make tiny balls out of it and I had to press it in a mould to give it a nice fancy shape. It was a fun task and as a kid, it always felt like a proud moment

May be someday, I will gain enough patience to make my Mom’s sondesh and share it with you.

Few weeks back, I came across Soma’s recipe on Sondesh, which is a different kind of sondesh made with curled milk ‘Chena’.

Making Chena is extremely easy, all you need is a cheese cloth or any fine clean white cloth, milk and something acidic like lemon juice or vinegar or citric acid.

It took me back to my childhood days and I decided to make these for Roxana and her family

Chena Sondesh/Curdle Milk Fudge – A Guest Post for Roxana @ A Little Bit Of Everything

Serving Size: 10 sondesh

Chena Sondesh/Curdle Milk Fudge – A Guest Post for Roxana @ A Little Bit Of Everything

Ingredients

1/2 gallon milk (8 cups)
3-1/2 tbs lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
a pinch of saffron threads
finely chopped pistachio, for garnish

Directions

In a deep pan, bring the milk to boil. Remember to stir it occasionally or else the milk will get burnt.

Once it starts boiling, reduce the heat and pour the lemon juice while constantly stirring.

Within 3 to 4 seconds, the milk will curdle and you should see clear green water. At this time, turn off the heat completely. You can drop few ice-cubes in the pan to bring down the temperature.

Let it cool for a minute and then strain it through the cheesecloth.

Wash the collected cheese with cold tap water to remove the lemon flavor.

Tie the sides of the cheesecloth together tightly and hang it somewhere to drain the remaining water from the cheese. This should take about an hour.

Take out the cheese from the cheesecloth and knead for about 10 minutes, or until it's smooth.

Mix sugar and saffron threads to it and knead for another couple of minutes.

Next, heat a non-stick pan and cook the paneer in low heat for about 15 minutes. Keep stirring constantly and eventually, you’ll see that the color will change to a darker shade.

Take it out and start shaping it while its warm.

I flattened the cheese dough and used a 1-inch cookie cutter to shape it up, but you can use any other shape you like.

These will be soft and very delicate to handle but as they cool down, they will harden a little bit.

Garnish with chopped pistachio and serve!

http://www.sunshineandsmile.com/2011/09/14/chena-sondeshcurdle-milk-fudge/