Chanar Dalna is an age-old Bengali vegetarian delicacy. Soft, melt in mouth cottage cheese balls dipped in a finger-licking-good lightly spiced curry, this is one of those dishes which I keep longing forever.
I cook my Chanar Dalna with coconut milk. Because coconut milk gives this curry a nice body. I’ve learned this trick from my mom in law. You can skip the coconut milk part if you don’t like to add it. Cook with water if you’re not using coconut milk, but I strongly recommend cooking with coconut milk once, then only you can understand the difference in taste. Here goes the recipe, hope you’ll enjoy cooking it for your family and friends. 🙂
Chanar Dalna/Bengali style Cottage Cheese Kofta Curry
Serves: 4
Ingredients
For Chanar Bora/Koftas
- Milk (I used full-fat milk) – 2 liters
- Lemon juice of 3 lemons
- Roasted Cumin seeds powder- 1½ tbsp (Dry fry the cumin seeds over medium heat, until fragrant. Care should be taken not to burn them. Grind using a food processor.)
- Salt- ½ tsp
- All-purpose flour/Maida- 2 tbsp
- Vegetable oil for frying the Koftas
For Dalna/Curry
- Potato- 2 medium sized (wash, peel and cut into cubes)
- Cumin seeds- 1 tsp + ½ tsp
- Turmeric powder- ½ tsp
- Kashmiri mirch powder- 1 tsp
- Cumin powder- 1 tsp
- Coriander powder- 1 tsp
- Thin coconut milk- 1 1/2 cup (or use 1 1/4 cup of water)
- Salt
- Sugar- 2 tsp
- Bay leaf- 2
- Whole dry red chilli- 2
- Ginger paste- 1 tsp
- Cinnamon- 1” (3 pieces)
- Green cardamom- 3 (roughly crushed)
- Green chillies- 2-3 (slitted)
- Cloves- 3
- Mustard oil
- Ghee/Clarified butter- 1tsp
- Garam masala powder- ¼ tsp
Method
For Chanar Bora/Koftas
In a deep bottomed pan Add milk. Let it boil over high heat, once boiled, lower the heat. Add lemon juice. Stir well; the milk will begin to curdle. Cottage cheese/chana/chena and whey will start to separate at this stage. Add some water (1/2 cup) immediately. Give this a quick boil over high heat. Again lower the heat. This way all the milk fat will separate nicely from the whey. And in the end you will get to see clear whey. Line a big bowl with muslin cloth/cheese cloth. Drain the whole cheese+whey mixture on this. Discard the whey or you can store this for 2-3 days in the refrigerator to use in your curries, gravies or dal. It gives a nice lemony flavor into any dish. Now tie the loose ends of the cheese cloth and place it under running water to wash away the lemony smell. Squeeze it well to discard the extra water from chana/cottage cheese. Care should be taken not to dry the chana completely, it should be a little moist.
Take out the chana on a flat plate. Add roasted Cumin seeds powder, maida, and salt. Mix well and knead the chana using your palm. Make lemon sized balls. Keep aside.
In a deep frying pan/kadai (nonstick preferably) heat ¾ cup of vegetable oil. Fry chanar bora/koftas over medium heat until golden brown in color. Drain on tissue paper and keep aside.
Preparing the Dalna/Curry
In the remaining oil of the kadai fry the cubed potatoes until golden brown in color, keep aside. Remove rest of the oil from the kadai.
Now add 2 tbsp mustard oil in the kadai. Temper with cumin seeds, dry red chillies, bay leaves, cinnamon, green cardamom, and cloves. Next to add 1 tsp of ginger paste, turmeric powder, kashmiri mirch powder, cumin powder, coriander powder, and salt. Mix well and fry until the masala starts leaving oil (it will take 1-minute maximum). Add 1 ¼ cup of water into this. If you are using coconut milk then add it and skip the water. Mix and give this a quick boil over high heat. Lower the heat; add potatoes, mix, cover and cook. When the potatoes are done, add 2 tsp of sugar. Mix and cook for 2-3 minutes more.
Add garam masala powder and ghee. Cook for 2-3 minutes further over low heat. Turn off the heat. There might be quite a lot of curry when you remove this from heat. But chanar bora/koftas will absorb the curry within some time and the curry will be reduced in quantity.
Serve hot with steamed rice.
Note:
You can make the cottage cheese balls/koftas with store brought cottage cheese/paneer also. But traditionally we use fresh home-made cottage cheese/chana for this dish.
