Bengali Sweet Pantua Recipe
Pantua recipe, much like other recipes of Bengali sweets, is a milk sweet dish where cow's milk, in particular, is curdled to get some cheese which in turn gives these scrumptious sweets. A very popular variety of sweet at a Bengali mishti'r dokan (Sweet shop), Pantua is a kind of Indian doughnut, hailing from the eastern parts of the country. Here, fresh cottage cheese is kneaded into a dough using a touch of flour, before dividing into balls for deep frying and then dipped in sugar syrup.
Servings 12 pieces
Equipment
- Mixing Bowl
- Stove Top
- Sauce Pan
- Heavy bottom Non-stick Pan
Ingredients
- 500 ml Cow's Milk
- 1 Lemon
- 2 tbsp All-Purpose Flour
- 1 tbsp Semolina or Sooji
- ½ tsp Baking Soda
- 4 tbsp Milk
- 1 tsp Ghee
- Ghee or Oil to fry
- 1 cup Sugar
- ¾ cup Water
- 1 Green Cardamom Pod
- 1 Black Cardamom Pod
Instructions
To make Chena or Chana
- Bring the milk to a rolling boil first. Once it is there, add the juice of a lemon into the milk. Here, I have used 500ml of Cow's Milk and that required the juice of half of a golf ball-sized lemon. Add the juice gradually. Once you see that the cheese has curdled and whey left underneath is pale green in colour, stop adding the juice.
- Turn off the heat. Take a cheesecloth and lay it on top of a sieve. Now, pour the contents of the milk pan into it. I would suggest you collect the whey underneath the sieve, as it is rich in nutrients.
- Gather the ends of the cheesecloth and let it sit on the sieve for 30 minutes to get rid of the moisture.
To make Sugar Syrup
- Take sugar and water in a sauce pan and gently bring it to a boil. Keep stirring so that the sugar is dissolved completely. Once you see that there are no more sugar crystals left, switch off the heat. Drop in the green cardamom pod and stir.
To make the Pantua
- Take the chena or cottage cheese in a mixing bowl and knead it for 8-10 minutes to make it smooth and supple
- Add the rest of the ingredients in it like All-Purpose Flour, Semolina and Baking Soda and knead it again
- Add Milk to make the dough moist and pliable to form the shape of Chanar Jilipi. it should be kind of a sticky dough as shown here. It took somewhere around 4 tablespoons of milk to get the perfect dough.
- Add a teaspoon of Ghee to help you work with the dough
- Divide the dough into 12 equal portions. Take each portion and roll it between your palms to make them smooth. Keep them covered with a damp cloth to avoid forming crust.
- Now, fry them in oil/ghee on very low heat. Once they turn brown, take them out and dunk them in Sugar Syrup. Let them soak for an hour or so before serving.