Chanar Dalna - Bengali cottage cheese curry

In one of my earlier recipes I have described how you can prepare Paneer curry. But, even a decade back paneer was not that readily available in market. So Bengalis used to make paneer at home.  The one that is made at home is softer and doesn’t have flour like the commercially available one. This is called chana. In this recipe I showed how you can make chana from milk and fry them to use with my earlier preparation. So you can have more authentic Chanar Dalna.

Preparation Time for chana from milk: - 15 min

Cooking Time for frying: - 15 min

Servings: - 2 persons

Ingredients:

1. 500 ml of full cream Cow’s Milk
2. 2~3 tbsp of lime juice or 5~6 ml White Vinegar.
3. Vegetable oil 3 tbsp for frying
4. Salt to taste
5. Chickpea powder / Beson – 1 tbsp. You can use same amount all-purpose flour / Maida for binding

You need to add more ingredients (minus the paneer of course) from my earlier recipe to complete the chanar dalna.

Preparation:-

1. Boil the milk to boiling point and then lower flame to simmer for some time.
   
2. Add 2 tbsp of the lime juice or White Vinegar and stir gently.
3. You will find that the cheese starts separating from the whey. The whey needs to turn a clear, faint green. If it still seems milky, add some more lime juice or Vinegar.
   
4. When the cheese has completely separated (should take about 5 mins on very low flame), turn off heat and pour into a strainer.
5. The loose water goes away thus. Now put the strainer under cold water and wash. This will remove the flavour of lime juice or vinegar.
   
6. Press with a big spoon or something heavy so that remaining whey gets squeezed out.
7. Knead well with your fingertips.
8. Soon it will be smooth and consistent. The chenna shouldn’t be sticky at any point.

At this point your chana / chenna are prepared. You can use it for any purpose. But my goal is to use it for my chanar dalna. So I go on to fry the chana.

9. Mix with Beson / Flour and make 6 flat pieces.
   
10. Heat oil in a non-stick kadai/wok in high flame, shallow fry the chana  pieces with little salt and keep aside.
    

Now you can follow my earlier recipe from point 2 and make Bengali Chanar Dalna. Enjoy…..

As always please feel free to comment, criticize and seek if any help is required. I am all ears.