Recipe: Jalebi With Fresh Cottage Cheese

What could be yummier than Chef Sushant Parab's Cottage Cheese Jalebi recipe? Jalebis deep fried in ghee and topped with rabdi!

Chenna Jalebi

Serves: 2

Ingredients

For the jalebi

• 200 gm fresh soft paneer or cottage cheese, preferably homemade
• 50 gm maida or all-purpose flour
• Water, optional, for making the dough

For the sugar syrup

• 50 gm sugar
• 20 gm kesar or saffron
• 50 gm water

For frying

• 200 gm ghee

For the garnish

• 20 gm pistachios, chopped
• 5 gm kesar or saffron
• Rabdi (please see the note below)

Method

• In a bowl, combine the cottage cheese with the maida.
  Knead into a firm hard dough, without adding water unless absolutely necessary.
  Divide the dough into equal portions and roll out each portion on a flat surface to make a long rope.
  Coil the rope to make a circle or pinwheel, leaving some space between each layer (please see pic above).
  Repeat the process with all the portions.
• In a non-stick saucepan, add the sugar, saffron and water.
  Keep stirring on low heat till the sugar dissolves and a one-thread syrup (please see the note below) is formed and take off heat.
  While the syrup is boiling and almost ready -- timing is important -- in a wok or kadhai heat the ghee.
  Fry the jalebis on medium-high heat till golden brown.
  Drain and dip the jalebis into the sugar syrup.
  Make sure the sugar syrup is not very hot, or else the jalebis will go soft.
  Drain from the syrup and transfer onto a plate.
  Garnish with chopped pistachios and saffron.
  Serve with rabdi.

Note: A one-thread syrup is sugar syrup viscous enough to pass the one-thread test.
It is important to keep testing for consistency while the sugar syrup is boiling.
The test for this is: Dip a spatula, preferably wooden, into the boiling sugar syrup and take out.
Some syrup would have coated the spatula.
Let it cool.
Touch the cooled syrup with your forefinger. Some syrup will come onto your finger.
Touch that with your thumb and separate thumb from forefinger.
When one little continuous delicate thread is formed by the syrup, when the coated forefinger is pulled away from your thumb, you have one-thread consistency sugar syrup.

To serve the jalebis with homemade rabdi, try Rediff's Rabdi recipe.

Chef Sushant Parab is the sous chef at Hotel Sahara Star, Mumbai.

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