Chhena Poda (Baked Fresh Cheese Cake)

Name: Chhena Poda (Baked Fresh Cheese Cake)
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 1 h 30 min
Total time: 2 h 30 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Indian
Ingredients: 2 l whole milk; 4 tbsp lemon juice; 120 g sugar; 2 tbsp semolina; 0.5 tsp ground cardamom; 2 tbsp cashews; 1 tbsp raisins; 1 tbsp ghee or butter

A dessert from Odisha in eastern India: fresh chhena, milk curdled with acid and drained, kneaded long with sugar and semolina, then baked for a long time until the outside is deep brown. The Odia name means "burnt cheese", and most of its flavour comes from the caramelised sugar.

Ingredients

8servings

Steps

Heat the milk to just below the boil, take it off the heat and wait 1 minute. Stir in the lemon water a little at a time and stop when the whey runs clear.
⏲ 1 min
Tip it into a cloth, rinse under cold water, tie it up and hang it 30 minutes to drain.
⏲ 30 min
Spread the chhena in a wide bowl and knead it with the heel of your hand 8-10 minutes, until the grain is gone and it comes together smooth.
⏲ 10 min
Add the sugar, semolina and cardamom and knead 5 minutes more, then mix in the cashews and raisins. The dough loosens because the sugar dissolves.
⏲ 5 min
Grease an 18cm tin with ghee and press the dough in evenly, 3cm deep. Scatter 1 tsp sugar over the top.
Bake at 160°C for 1 hour 20 minutes, until the outside is deep brown and the edges come away from the tin (what sugar does).
⏲ 80 min
Cool in the tin, turn out and cut into squares. Serve warm or cooled.

Variations

Smaller. Divided between muffin tins, it bakes in 40-50 minutes.
With jaggery. Jaggery in place of sugar gives a darker colour and a deeper taste.
Without nuts. The cashews and raisins can be left out.

Tips

Hang the chhena to drain; do not press it.
Do not cut the kneading short. If grain is left in it, it bakes up crumbly.
Bake until the outside is deep brown. That colour is the flavour.
Cool it in the tin before cutting. Hot, it breaks.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

The same chhena, sweetened another way. Rasgulla rolls kneaded chhena into balls and boils them in a thin syrup, so the sugar soaks in from outside. Chhena poda kneads the sugar in first and bakes it for a long time, so the sweetness turns to caramel. Both are sweets of Odisha, and neither can be made from the same cheese pressed hard, as it is for palak paneer.
It looks like Basque cheesecake outside and is nothing like it inside. The Basque cake bakes an egg and cream batter briefly in a hot oven, scorching only the top and leaving the middle runny. Chhena poda has no egg and no cream, so there is nothing to run, and it is baked low and long until it is firm and brown all over (dairy and heat).