Holi is being celebrated in India today. This festival of colors is known as harvest festival and marks the beginning of spring season. It has its origin in ancient Indian mythology and these origins differ in various parts of India associated with legends of Lord Krishna and Radha, Bhakt Prahlad and Holika, Sacrifice of Kamadeva.

Personally, I don't play Holi, a habit that I developed over the years from my childhood as my dad opposed playing with colors only to prevent us from getting exposed to artificial colors. Now residing in the region  for so many years with cultural differences, such celebrations in public stands no chance. Moreover, as a family including my kiddo, we value the need for water and are aware of our social responsibility towards Mother Earth. Thus, its always no no playing colors and wasting water at my place, but then there's no stopping to enjoy the colorful delicacies on this festive occasion. Posting here the recipe of COLORFUL RASGULLAS ... chilled ones to beat the heat!



Who would not like soft, spongy, juicy rashgullas ?



I follow the recipe as shown here on Manjula's Kitchen, just increase the quantity to get required number of rasgullas and have used vinegar with lemon juice. Colourful rasgullas has been inspiration from Little food junction blog.



Ingredients

8 cups milk 
1/4 cup lemon juice + 1/4 cup vinegar in 1 cup of water
3 cups Sugar 
9 cups water 

Method:

Mix lemon juice and vinegar in 1 cup of lukewarm water and keep aside.
Boil the milk in heavy bottomed pan over medium heat. Stir occasionally making sure that the base doesn't get burnt. Once the milk comes to a boil, simmer the flame. Add vinegar-lemon juice gradually on the sides of the pan. Stir the milk gently. Once you see the curd separating from the whey switch off the flame. Take a collander/ strainer and line it with muslin cloth. Drain the whey and rinse the chenna under cold water [in order to remove the sourness of the lemon]. Now take the ends of muslin cloth together, gently squeeze out the excess water. Hang it to the tap and without disturbing it wait till all the water dries up. It took me one hour. Alternatively you can also press the muslin cloth with chenna under a heavy pan. Taking the right amount of water out of chenna is one of the important steps in preparing this dish. To check this take a little piece of chenna on your palm and rub with your fingers. After rubbing the paneer for about 15 -20 seconds, you should be able to make a firm but smooth ball.

Now take the granular chenna on the kneading surface. Knead it till you get a really smooth soft paneer dough. Have a look at this link here for tips on kneading. Pinch the dough to make same sized balls. I got about 17-18 medium sized balls.

Meanwhile mix sugar and water in a pressure cooker on medium high heat and bring to a boil. Drop the paneer balls one by one carefully and close the pressure cooker. [Make sure the pressure cooker is large enough to accomodate the FINISHED rasgullas, as they will expand to about double in the volume while cooking in the syrup]. Pressure cook for 1 whistle, simmer the gas for next 7 minutes. Switch off the flame. After 5 mins pour cold water over the cooker before opening. The balls should have doubled in size and become light and spongy on touch. Allow them to cool . Add cardamom powder to sugar syrup. Yummy rasgullas are done and you may enjoy them as a sweet dish. 



If you wish to get colours on them then proceed as mentioned below.
Divide it into three parts and add respective natural food colors [ Pink from beet water juice, yellow from saffron water and brown from cocoa powder]. Soak the rasgullas in this colored sugar syrup separately and I kept it in fridge overnight to get such lovely colors on rasgullas.[In place of cardamom powder you can add few drops of rose essence or kewra essence to the sugar syrup]. Serve them chilled garnished with chopped nuts [optional]. 

Note: You can also make colored rasgullas by dividing the paneer dough into three parts and adding the natural food color to three portions respectively before steaming them. Take care to steam them separately so the colors will not get mixed up.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing with COLORS posing in front of my camera from my kitchen lab. I dedicate these colorful rasgullas as virtual treat to all my friends and readers... 
May God shower the bright colors of love, health, happiness and prosperity upon all of you. 

Wish you all A VERY HAPPY AND SAFE HOLI !!!



Happy Cooking!