Atreyee Poddar
Buy proper milk
Full-fat, and not the long-life carton kind. Toned milk gives you chhena that crumbles. One litre gets you about twelve rasgullas.
Take the milk off the heat first
Boil it, switch off the burner, and wait a minute. Then add lemon juice (cut with an equal amount of water) a spoonful at a time, stirring, until the whey goes thin and greenish. Pouring acid into furiously boiling milk gives you tough curds.
Rinse the chhena
Run cold tap water over it for a minute or so. Skip this and you’ll taste lemon in the finished sweet, and the leftover heat will keep cooking the curds.
Hang it, don’t wring it
Tie up the muslin and let it drip for 20 to 30 minutes. If it’s still dripping, it’s too wet. If it feels chalky, it’s too dry. You want it to hold together and still feel a little damp.
Knead for long
Eight to ten minutes, using the heel of your palm, until the dough is smooth with no grains and has a faint sheen. Your wrist will complain. This is the step that decides whether you get spongy rasgullas or crumbly ones.
Roll them small and smooth
Twelve balls from this batch, each with a flawless surface. Cracks you can barely see will split wide open in the boiling syrup. They also double in size, so go smaller than your instinct says.
Boil hard, then cool slowly
For the syrup, use 200 g sugar, a litre of water and two crushed cardamom pods. Get it to a rolling boil in a wide pot, add the balls, cover, and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. If the syrup thickens, splash in some hot water. Turn off the heat, add a teaspoon of rose water if you like it, and let the rasgullas cool in the syrup before chilling.
Serve them cold with a spoonful of syrup. They keep three to four days in the fridge, though they probably won’t last that long.