Chanar Jilipi / Paneer Jalebi

Chanar Jilipi or Chenna Jhilapi or you can also call it as Paneer Jalebi is a sweet made out of fresh cottage cheese i.e Chenna. Though this sweet mainly belongs to Bengal,it is also available in eastern part of Odisha.

Being from Odisha, my love for sweets made out of fresh cottage is pretty obvious. In Odisha, one can find sweets are predominantly made out of chenna. Chenna Poda ( which means Burnt Cottage Cheese ), Pahala Rasogolla, Chenna Gaja, Chena Jhili , Rasabali, Kheera to name a few. I have a sweet tooth. And these sweets are my extreme weakness. I could trade any other desserts for these sweets.

A few days back while having a casual chat with my cook (who happened to be a Bengali), I told her how much I love these sweets. We started talking about the preparation of few of them. She and her husband used to have a small shop couple of years back and they used to sell some Bengali delicacies. Then I told her How i used have this sweet called Chenna Jhilapi during my short stay in Bhubaneswar 12 years back. I haven't got a chance to have these since then.

From her I got to know how this sweet is losing its presence now a days. And then she told, they prepare chennar jilipi very often at home during special occasions. She obiliged to share the recipe with me.

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Here I have used khoya but it is optional. She told few people use milk powder too. Sooji / rava is also used instead of maida as a binding agent in some recipes too.

If want to know whether you can use store bought paneer, yes absolutely you can. But I would strongly recommend fresh home made paneer. Nothing can beat fresh chenna.

Chennar Jilipi

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Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Indian

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours

Servings: 16 piece

Ingredients

• 1.5 cow milk litter fresh full fat
• lemon Juice of a
• ¼ cup Khoya
• 2 tsps maida
• 1 cardamom green

For Syrup

• 1.5 cups sugar
• ¾ cups water
• 2 cardamom green
• Small pinch saffron of

Instructions

• In a heavy bottom pan bring milk to a boil.Add lemon juice.
• When the milk starts to curdle, switch off the gas.
• Pour the curdle mixture on the sieve.
• Wash drained chenna under running tap to get rid of any lemon residue.
• Tie the chenna in a double layered cheese cloth and hang in the kitchen counter upto 4 hours. Let all the water drain from chenna.
• Gently squeeze chenna in between your palms to remove any more liquid.
• Shift chenna in a bowl. Add khoya and maida.
• Remove seeds of tardahe cardamom. Place in a mortar and pestle. Add pinch of sugar to the . And make a fine powder of it.
• Add cardamom powder to the chenna mixture. Knead the mixture with your hand till very smooth and the chenna starts releasing oil. Kneading the mixture to a very very smooth texture is very important here.Cover and let it rest for 5-10 minutes while preparing the sugar syrup.
• In a pan add sugar and water. Bring to a boil. reduce heat. add crushed cardamom and saffron strands. Boil for 5 minutes more. Switch off the gas. And let the syrup cool slightly.
• Heat enough oil in a frying pan.
• Scoop 1 tbsp of chenna mixture and form to a smooth ball with out any cracks.
• Roll the dough on a flat surface to a rope(neither very thick nor thin). Roll the rope to a coil just like shown in the above picture.
• Carefully lift the shaped Jilipi from the surface and slide to the oil.
• Fry on medium-low heat until golden brown in colour.
• Remove from oil using a slotted spoon and slide into warm sugar syrup.
• Repeat the above process for rest of the dough.