Recipe: Chenar Payesh

This rich, luscious, creamy Bengali sweet dish is one of my favourites. This recipe is made by directly immersing the chena balls into thick and creamy milk pudding infused with lovely flavours of cardamom and saffron.
Try out this recipe today and impress your loved ones.

1. Add 1 litre full fat milk to a pan. stir and cook until it reduces to almost 700 ml.

2. Take little warm milk out, mix it with 5 tbsp milk powder, add it back to the milk.

3. Add a pinch of saffron (optional), 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp cardamom powder, 1 bay leaf and boil again to reduce it to approx 600 ml.

4. Add 1 tbsp ghee in another pan and fry the chopped dry fruits slightly for 2-3 minutes.

5. Add the fried dry fruits to the milk and boil for 2 minutes and switch off the gas and allow milk to cool. remove the bay leaf.

6. Knead the chena for 4-5 minutes continuously with 1 tbsp sugar until smooth. roll out small smooth balls out of it and keep aside. make sure there are no cracks on the chena balls.

7. Add the chena balls to the slightly cooled milk and submerge them. (don’t add chena balls to hot milk or they might break).

8. Once submerged, give it a very very gentle mix and switch on the flame to low to medium and allow the chena balls to boil. don’t stir too much or they will break at this point.

9. Cook on low to medium flame for another 10 minutes (not more than that) and if required stir very gently.

10. Remove from flame, allow it to cool. refrigerate for 4-5 hours and serve chilled.