Pantua Recipe
Deep fried Bengali sweet made with chhana or homemade panner and then dunked into a syrup.
Ingredients
For making Chhana
- 1.5 ltrs full cream milk
- 2- 3 nos lemons
For making sugar syrup
- 2 cups sugar
- 4 cups water
For making the dough
- 1/3 cup semolina plus 1 tbsp if required
- 1/4 cup all purpose flour plus 1 tbsp if required
- 1 tbsp ghee
- 1/4 cup khowa
- handful of cardamom pods
Other ingredients
- ghee for deep frying see notes
Instructions
- In a deep vessel, boil the milk. When the milk has boiled, add the lemon juice and turn off the heat. You might need extra lemon juice if the milk doesn't curdle.
- Once the milk has separated, stran it in a muslin cloth and separate the whey. Squeeze out as much water as possible.
- Place the muslin cloth with the chhana over a a large strainer and put a weight on top to release any excess water. Keep this for 15 to 20 minutes.
- This would make about 300 gms of chhana or 3 cups approximately.
- In a kadai or another heavy bottomed pan, take the sugar and water to make the sugar syrup.
- Let the water boil and melt the sugar. Give it a stir and let it continue to boil till the water becomes a syrupy consistency- what we call a one string consistency. Turn off the gas and keep aside.
- In a mixing bowl, take the chhana and mash it with your fingers. Add semolina, flour, ghee and mix it thoroughly.
- Knead very well for about 5 - 6 minutes till the dough becomes very smooth. If the dough is extremely sticky, then add a tbsp more of semoline and 1/2 tbsp of maida to it.
- Knead till the dough is smooth , not extremely sticky, firm but soft.
- Remove the cardamom seeds from the pods and keep them ready. Grate the khowa and mash them. Make small tiny balls of the khowa.
- Now make small balls, about an inch in diameter of the pantua dough. Flatten it in the palm of your hand. Insert a small khowa ball and one cardamom seed and seal the dough.
- Make it a nice round shape without any cracks and place on a plate.
- Complete the entire dough and then get ready to fry them.
- In a kadai, take ghee for deep frying. When the ghee has become just warm, add the pantua balls in batches.
- Keep the heat at medium and let the pantua fry very slowly. Turn them around when one side has cooked. All sides need to cook evenly.
- Once the pantua balls have become a nice brown colour, take them out of the ghee and dunk into the prepared sugar syrup.
- Let them soak in the syrup for at least an hour.
- After an hour, they are ready to be served. However, if you keep them longer, they absord more syrup and become even more soft.
Notes
You can use ghee for deep frying. Ghee adds flavour to pantua. You can also use only vegetable oil or a combination of both.
The amount of semolina and maida to be added depends on the chhana. It is a trial and error method.
Always fry one ball and see that it is working out beofre adding more semolina or flour.