Tuesday 19 July 2011

number 1 - the rag rug of doom


The packaging says easy.fun.quick. Five years begs to differ. Its more like a hard, fiddly, slow pain in the bum. Each row takes an average of about half an hour to complete thats without any mistakes. Trust me there were many, I wanted to shred it to pieces on multiple occasions


Monday 18 July 2011

Rossogollas-10

Hands up who knows what Rossogollas actually are? Nope didn't think so. Rossogollas are a kind of Indian sweet -I think, made out of Chenna  with nuts and then like boiled in syrup yeah its slightly bizarre.

Making Rossogollas was number 10 on my list so I set out to make the kitchen a mess- that was pretty much the only thing I managed to do as when I was separating the curds and whey through the tea towel lets just say the stuff went everywhere and I was covered in molten not-quite-cheese.

I am aware that when separating curds and whey, one should use muslin, not any old tea towel , so it would not come to too much of  a surprise that my plan didn't exactly go to plan, meaning that the mixture was funneled through the towel multiple times, hence resulting more of the liquid to spill and leave me with truly cheesy jeans.  The recipe said that by using 4 litres of milk, I would be able to make 30 rossogollas, yet as I didn't know how any of this was going to work I only used 1 litre of milk but only ended up with enough curd (or panneer as the Indians call it) for 3 Rossogollas -epic fail, so either I have ended up with incredibly curdy whey or I just failed. To make the panneer in chenna - if you want to know how that works- you add a tbsp of both flour and sugar, this is also where I added the nuts.

 The syrup is basically sugar and water and some rosewater to taste. The Rossogollas are boiled for 10 minutes but this makes them soggy so I'm slightly confused as to what the point was but they are still yummy but just oddly textured....shame I only made 3.......