Jaggery Sandesh

The moment one thinks about Bengal, the first thought goes towards the heavenly tasting Mishti or sweets, like Rasgulla or Sandesh and many more such delicacies prepared with chena or paneer.  Today, we are going to talk about Sandesh which is prepared with jaggery or gur especially made with date palm.  The date palm jaggery has a very distinct flavor which is available in West Bengal only in winters.

The jaggery collectors put hollow pipes on the trunk of the date palm trees and they hang earthen pots connected with these pipes.   Overnight the sap gets collected in earthen pots.  Next day this sap is boiled to turn into a caramel colored jaggery.

I did not have date palm jaggery at home but had normal sugarcane jaggery so I decided to experiment with that to prepare the sandesh.  Whether it is date palm jaggery or sugarcane jaggery, one thing is for sure that jaggery sandesh need minimum cooking and that is one of the reasons they turn out to be very soft melt in mouth kind of sweet.

 

  

Ingredients:

Full cream or whole milk 2 liter, lemon juice 4 tsp, grated jaggery 5 tbsp, cherries 5 cut into small pieces

Method:

Boil milk in a heavy pan over medium flame.  As the milk comes to a boil, add the lemon juice gradually and stir.  The milk will curdle.  Turn off the flame and let it cool off a little.  Take cheesecloth or any muslin cloth.  Place it on a strainer and strain the curdled milk. Now collect the opposite links of the cheese cloth, tie them and hang on the water tap in the kitchen sink.  Before hanging them let this bundle run under fresh water for a few seconds so that lemon flavor does not stay in the cheese.

Let all the water drain from the cheese cloth.  It takes almost an hour.  After that you may squeeze the bundle between your hands so that excess water drains out.

Take the chena out of the cloth and knead it for good 15 to 20 minutes so that there are no lumps in the chena.

Take a heavy duty non stick pan.  Put 1 ½ tbsp of water and grated jaggery in it on slow flame. Stir it well so that jaggery is evenly melted.  Now reduce the flame to the lowest and add the kneaded chena to the jaggery and mix very well.  Turn off the flame but keep stirring the chena and jaggery mix for another 5 minutes or so.  Taste the sweetness of the mix.  Jaggery sandesh is little less sweet but if you have a very sweet tooth, you may add a tsp of powdered sugar to the mix.

Transfer the mix to a plate. Take a bowl of water, wet you palms a little and take a tsp of cooked chena and jaggery mix on your palm and form a round shape of it.  Repeat the same process with the rest of the chena mix and keep placing these balls on a different plate.

Put this plate in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.  Take the plate out.  On each ball make a gentle dent with your thumb and garnish it with a piece of cherry.