Bengali · Dessert
Mishti Doi
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners.
Ingredients
- 1.5 litres whole milk
- 60g granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp water
- 100g nolen gur (date palm jaggery), chopped
- 60g live plain yoghurt, at room temperature
The skills inside
Sugar stages & caramelDry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Reduce the milk over a medium flame, scraping the skin off the sides back in every few minutes, for 30 minutes, until it is down to about 1 litre and has turned the colour of ivory. 30 min
- Melt the sugar with the water in a dry pan until it is the colour of strong tea and smells nutty, then stand back and kill it with a ladle of the hot milk. Stir the caramel and the gur into the pot until both dissolve.
- Cool the sweetened milk to 45C (113F). Against the inside of the wrist it should read warm, not hot.
- Whisk the starter yoghurt smooth with a little of the warm milk, fold it into the rest without beating air in, and pour into unglazed earthenware pots.
- Cover and hold undisturbed at 35C to 40C (95F to 104F) for 7 hours, until the surface wobbles as one piece and pulls cleanly from the side of the pot, then chill 4 hours before serving. 420 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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