Sutarpheni/Sutarfeni - A Delicacy

This is another delicacy that I had never made before. It is fine strands of dough wrapped in a circle that is deep fried and then covered by syrup. You may have seen recipes using the shredded phyllo dough. I wanted to know how to make it from flour directly instead of the store bought phyllo dough. If you have been reading the blog, you know I enjoy trying out traditional recipes using the original method. So without wasting time, I called up my Mom and asked her if she knew how to make it. She had an old marathi recipe book which provided the traditional method of making them. I noted it down, discussed it with mom and decided to tackle it immediately. The end result was fantastic.  The only difference from the store bought version was the color and hence the texture was also little better and crispier instead of the chewy texture that the store bought one tends to have. I didn't want to risk leaving any part of the sutarpheni uncooked, so I fried it till t was a folder brown color. 

I am ecstatic that I was able to reproduce this delicacy at home, that too from scratch. Even though it is laborious, the process is so much fun that I plan to make it frequently. I enjoyed taking photos of this dish and this post has a lot of pictures.

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour

Water to knead dough and for syrup

1/2-1 cup ghee to soak dough

1/4 tsp salt

Ghee for frying

1 cup sugar

Sliced almonds and pistachios for garnish (optional)

Rose water (optional)

Method

Using minimal water, knead the all purpose flour into dough. It should be a hard and tight dough. Cover the bowl and let it rest for at least 3 hours. The dough will soften a little. Then using a pestle, pound the dough and add a little water at a time. Then knead it again. During the last step of the process, dissolve the salt in a tsp of water and add this water to the dough. Pound it and knead it well. Make sure to add enough water and pound it till the dough is very soft, smooth and extremely pliable. 

In a plate which has an edge, pour half cup of ghee (to begin with) and whisk it up with your fingers for a minute or two. You may need to add more ghee as you process the dough.

Then divide this dough into 5-6 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, flatten it and make a neat hole in the center of it (like a doughnut) and place each ball into the ghee. The ghee will rise up into the center hole and prevent it from closing up. Make sure to place these in an order. Now start with the first dough ball. Stretch the center hole as long as

you can (the dough shouldn't tear) and place it back in the plate. Do the same with all the pieces. Make sure you maintain the order. Then let them rest for a minute or two. Then start with the first dough piece and stretch the center out further. If it becomes a very long loop, wrap it over itself (like you would wrap a thread). Do this with each piece. Repeat this process or elongating and wrapping till you start seeing fine threads in your dough ball. Keep winding the threads onto themselves as you keep elongating it. It took me about 1.5 hours of wrapping to get really thin threads.

Heat the ghee in a frying pan. Once hot, place one of the dough ball which should look like a thread ball into the ghee. Using two forks, work

Quickly to tease the dough strands away from each other. Fry it till it starts to turn golden. Once it starts to turn golden the color turns brown very fast, so be quick in removing it from the ghee. Fry all the dough thread balls. Let the ghee drain and cool them. At this stage you can store them for later use.

To make the syrup

Cover the sugar with just enough water to submerge the sugar. Now bring it to a boil and boil it for a couple minutes and make a simple syrup. Once cool, pour this syrup over the sutarpheni or dunk the sutarpheni in the syrup. You can add rose water to the syrup. 

You can also sprinkle powdered sugar on the sutarpheni when hot and let it melt.

Garnish with slices pistachios and almonds. 

Tips

Fry the dough immediately after the last round of wrapping. Letting it rest after that for more than a couple of Minutes will lead to the strands merging into each other and you will

not be able to tease out the threads easily.