Ricotta Cheese and Pistachio Squares / Pistachio Burfi
My Dad was in Air Force
when we (me and my brother) were small. So we had to constantly move
around as part of his job. We got the opportunity to travel a
lot in the northern part of India. My childhood memories of North
India lingers around the festival of light called 'Diwali', which is an
auspicious occasion for kids to enjoy galore of sweets. Our whole
building complex will be decorated with small clay lamps which still remain as
a spectacular view in my memory. It is a time of celebration with lots of
fireworks. My brother was brave enough to play with sparklers even when
he was small, but I would dodge behind my Mom by closing my ears so tight with
my hands. I don't think I have changed much from that, I still close
my ears to loud noises of the fireworks.
The celebration of
Diwali is not restricted to Northern parts of India. It had traversed
across the globe and at this time, you can see different varieties of sweets in
Indian stores and people line up to buy these goodies. These sweets are
heavenly I would say, and Burfi is my favorite. My daughter also loves
Indian sweets, her favorite is Burfi too.
I make these
burfis at home. Since Diwali is around the corner, I would like to share
this recipe with all of you.
Ingredients
1 (30 oz) - Ricotta Cheese or Paneer
½ cup + 2 – 3 tbsp - Sugar or as needed per your taste
2 tsp - Butter/ghee
2 cups - Milk Powder
½ cup - unsalted Pistachio finely chopped
or powdered
¼ tsp - Cardamom powder
Direction
- Using a hand mixer, mix the ricotta cheese into a thick
paste.
- Take a non-stick pan and add the cheese to it and cook
for 3-4 mins, it will start to loosen up.
- Add a tsp of butter and stir continuously.
- Add the sugar, milk powder and pistachio powder and
keep stirring till it forms a thick dough or when it starts to separate
from the sides of the pan. It took 20-25 minutes of stirring for me.
- Add the cardamom powder and stir for another 1 min and
turn off the stove.
- Apply little butter on the glass container/bakeware and
transfer the burfi to the container.
- Apply little butter and flatten the burfi using a
spatula or spoon.
- Garnish it with halved pistachios.
- Cover it and refrigerate for 1 hr. It can be sliced
into desired shapes.
Notes
- You can substitute pistachios with cashew nuts or almonds too or
totally skip the nuts.
- If you are not adding the powdered nuts, make sure you substitute it with milk powder so that the burfi can be set easily.
- I used Miceli’s Traditional Ricotta cheese and Carnation Milk Powder.
