Nolen gurer payesh
A winter delight, this Bengali rice pudding, is sweetened with the very special, seasonal nolen gur or date palm jaggery, cooked in whole milk and topped with fried cashews. Divinity is this!
Equipment
- Sauce pan
Ingredients
- 1 l whole (full fat) milk
- 60g gobindo bhog or jeera samba rice washed and soaked in water for 10 minutes
- ¾ cup nolen gur or to taste
- 1 bay leaf optional
- 1 tbsp ghee
Garnish (optional)
- 8-10 cashews
- 2 tbsp charoli seeds or raisins
- 2 tbsp ghee
Instructions
- Drain the rice and rub it well with the ghee. Transfer this to a sauce pan and pour the milk and add the bay leaf, mix and set it to cook over medium flame
- When the milk comes to a full boil, stir and lower the flame. Continue stirring, scraping the cream from the sides and cooking until the milk thickens and reduces to half (took me about 45 minutes)
- By this time the rice too should have cooked, remove the saucepan from the heat and add in the nolen gur. Give the payesh a gentle but a through mix, cover and set aside for 15-20 minutes to the flavors to deepen
- In a small frying pan, heat the ghee. once it melts, add the cashews and charoli seeds (or raisins). Fry until golden brown in colour and set aside
- Serve your creamy and delicious nolen gurer payesh, garnished with the cashews and charolis, chilled or at room temperature and enjoy a wonderful seasonal, Bengali dessert
Notes
- Remember to keep scraping the sauce pan while cooking the milk. Incorporating the cream and cooking it further, leads to a creamier payesh
- While gobindo bhog rice is traditionally used for this Bengali recipe, jeeraga samba or kalijeera rice varieties also work well
- Instead of frying the cashew and raisins, you could keep them soaked in water for about 10 minutes and cook it along with the rice, in your payesh
- It is imperative that you add the gur only when the heat is off. Impurities in the date palm jaggery could cause the milk to split, hence it is best added later
- *Only remove the payesh from the heat once the rice is cooked
- l - litre
- tbsp - tablespoon
- 1 cup = 250 millilitres