Sutarpheni/ Sutarfeni - Take Two - The Professional Version

I had made this a few days ago and the version made with just all purpose flour, water and ghee was a big hit at home. However it didn't look the same as the store bought version which is usually white and has very fine strands. I was however not completely happy with the result. I wanted to figure out how to make the same version as the professionals in the sweet shops make. I had to figure out a way of stopping the threads from collapsing into each other as they became thinner and another was to find a way to be able to cook the sutarpheni and keep it a white color instead of a golden brown. Also I had to use a finer instrument than a fork to separate the threads out.

So I made a couple of adjustments to the original recipe, eliminated some steps which didn't seem essential to the thread making process and was able to make the perfect sutarpheni, just like the store bought one. This version was as laborious as the first one but the end result was so perfect, I was completely thrilled. So here is the recipe for the professional version. 

Ingredients 

1 cup all purpose flour

Water to knead dough and for syrup

3/4 cup ghee to soak dough

2 tbsp corn flour

1/2 cup oil

1/4 tsp salt

Oil for frying

1 cup sugar

sliced almonds and pistachios for garnish (optional)

rose water (optional)

Method

Add the salt to the flour and using minimal water, knead the all purpose flour into dough. It should be a tight dough. Cover the bowl and let it rest for at least 1 hour upto 3 hours. The dough will soften.

In a plate/tray which has an edge, pour the ghee and oil. Add cornflour to it and whisk up the mixture with your fingers or a fork for a minute or two till it is well mixed. 

Then divide this dough into 3-4 pieces, each a large fistful. 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 tray. The ghee, oil and corn flour mixture 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 (see video below). 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 oil in a frying pan. Once hot (test the oil temperature by adding little dough and if it comes up immediately, it is hot) place one of the dough ball which should look like a thread ball into the ghee. Use a sharp skewer to tease the dough strands away from each other. Fry at a medium high temperature and fry it till the bubbles start to subside. It will take a a minute or two. Then flip it over and fry for another 30 seconds to a minute. It will feel soft as you turn it. 

Remove it and drain completely. At this stage you can store it 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

Addition of the cornflour helps in keeping the threads separate and prevents them from collapsing into each other, as the other dough balls are being processed. It is easier to control the oil temperature and things fry at a slower pace in oil than in ghee. Hence the color of the sutarpheni can remain white even when it is completely cooked.

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. 

Mande - A Delicacy from Belgaum

I had eaten this delicacy called Mande once when I was a child. It was store bought and I remember it was absolutely delicious, but I didn't know what it was called and hence couldn't request for it to be bought again. Also, I never came across it in a store again. So that was the end of that till I ate this again recently. A friend came back after visiting Belgaum and brought the delicacies found there for us to taste. As soon as I saw it, I knew what I was looking at and it still tasted as delicious as I remembered it from childhood. Of course, a taste was not enough and considering that I was thousands of miles from Belgaum, the only option was to figure out how to make it myself.  I was so motivated that for the next few days my focus in every free minute was to research how to make it. I didn't really find any elaborate recipes or videos or techniques. Came across many puran poli videos which also seem to be called mande (a new learning for me) but not much in regards to this version of Mande.

This version of Mande is a large very thin flaky poli/chapati which is filled with a slightly sweet mixture and the stuffing is so thin and fine, that the poli seems to be made of sweetened dough rather than filled with stuffing. After several discussions with Mom, I decided to try it out based on the data I had gathered. Oh! The result was perfect and delicious and so flaky. Of course, all of it was eaten as soon as it was cooked and I could just save one till I took some photos before it was also devoured. One of my favorite preparations that is difficult to make, but so worth it.  If you are a proficient puran poli maker, this will prove to be a little bit easier but definitely a preparation that I would rate as difficult. But if you can make this you will be so happy with the result that you will want to keep making and eating this till you run out of ingredients.

Ingredients

1 cup fine semolina/rava

1.5 cups all purpose flour/maida

1/2-1 cup water

1 cup powdered sugar (not icing sugar)
1/4 cup poppy seeds (white)/khus khus (do not use black poppy seeds), roasted and powdered

1/8 tsp cardamom/elaichi powder

1/4 cup clarified butter/ghee
1/2 tsp salt
1/4-1/2 cup rice flour, to roll the mande
oil/ghee to roast the mande

Method
For the dough
Mix the rava and 1 cup of maida together. Add salt. Then add a little water at a time and knead the dough. The dough should be very hard, kneaded with  minimal water. Cover it and keep it aside for 30 mins. Then add a few drops of water at a time and using a pestle, pound it and knead it till the dough becomes very soft and pliable.

For the stuffing
Whisk the ghee till it is fluffy, then add in the poppy seed powder, sugar, cardamom powder and the remaining 1/2 cup all purpose flour. knead this all together. It should all come together as a very soft pliable dough. The consistency should be similar to the dough made for the covering. If the dough is dry, add some more ghee, till it comes together as becomes a soft ball

To make the mande
The mande need to be flaky and soft and so need to be cooked on a low indirect heat. So they cannot be cooked directly in a pan or tava. So place a thick walled pan or an earthen pot which has a dome shaped base upside down on your gas. You can also use an old cooker which is not flat bottomed. I placed a cast iron tava on my flat cook top and placed an old dome shaped steel pan upside down on it as my cooking surface and let it heat up as I rolled out the mande.

Make 2 equal sized balls of the dough covering. Make a ball of the same size of the stuffing. Now flatten each ball into similar shaped round discs of approximately the same radius and thickness. sandwich the stuffing disc into the two covering dough discs and pinch the seams to close the stuffing in it. Now taking care, start rolling the made into a flat thin disc (poli/roti/tortilla/chapati). Roll from the center to the edges making sure that the stuffing also gets rolled out along with it and spreads to all the parts of the disc. Dust the rolling surface with rice flour to keep the disc from sticking to the rolling surface or the rolling pin. Roll the disc as thin as you can. If proficient you can take a small rolled out disc and use your hands to stretch it paper thin into a circle.

It should be translucent and you should be able to see through it. Now place it onto the hot upside down pan and cook it till you start seeing small bubbles. Then flip it over and cook it till light brown spots appear. Flip it again till the partially cooked surface gets completely cooked. Apply a little oil or ghee while roasting. The cooking process takes time as it is indirect heat, so be patient.

Once cooked, fold it up a couple of times to make a neat rectangle. Serve with milk. It tastes great when warm as well as when it is at room temperature.

Tips
If you do not have powdered sugar, use your mixer/blender to powder normal sugar. Sift it before use. If you have made puran poli, the dough should be soft like the puran poli dough.

Beet, Fennel and Orange Salad

I bought freshly harvested vegetables and fruits at a farmer's market and decided to make a salad to enjoy the natural flavors of the vegetables. The beetroots and fennel were so sweet and delicious, it was not necessary to add any dressing either. I have provided a dressing recipe with the salad but you can eat the combination as is and taste the flavors of all the vegetables. Absolutely delicious!

Ingredients
1 red beetroot
1 golden beetroot
1 fennel bulb
2 oranges

Dressing (optional)
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp vinegar
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
1/4 cup olive oil (optional)

Method

Cook the beetroots and peel them. I usually cook the beetroots in a pressure cooker or InstantPot. It takes about 10 minutes on manual, with vent closed to cook them. Or in a traditional pressure cooker, I cook it till I get 2-3 whistles. Let the pressure drop naturally. Now, it becomes very easy to peel them. Slice away the top and bottom and then you can easily peel it. Slice the fennel bulb as well after removing the core. See the Fennel Pasta recipe for the process of removing the core of the fennel bulb. Peel the orange and slice it.

Try to slice these vegetables as finely as  you can. If you have a mandolin slicer, use the thin setting and make thin slices.

Mix all the ingredients of the dressing and whisk it well. You can also use a small blender to mix them thoroughly. Adjust the seasoning as needed. If you want it to be sweeter, add more honey. If you want it to be more sour, increase the vinegar amount. You can skip the oil and the dressing will still taste delicious. It will get a creamier texture if oil is added and whisked well.

Add enough dressing to dress the salad well and toss to cover all the slices.

Tips
You can also skip the dressing and just sprinkle salt and pepper and squeeze some lemon juice. When the vegetables are fresh, a dressing is not needed. 

Pithla- A chick pea flour curry

This is the simplest version of pithla. A pudding like curry made with chickpea flour seasoned with garlic. It is perfect for a quick dinner. And it is the ultimate comfort food when paired with white rice and ghee. This is the version that I like which has a pudding like soft texture and is a little fluid and can be easily mixed with rice. 

Ingredients

2 tbsp oil

1/8 mustard seeds/rai

1/8 cumin seeds/ jeera

Pinch of asafetida powder

1/4 tsp of turmeric powder 

1 cup chick pea flour 

4 cups water 

4 large garlic cloves, finely diced

1 onion, finely chopped

1-2 green chilies, slit in the middle or finely diced, to taste 

Salt, to taste

1/4 tsp sugar  

Method 

Mix the chickpea flour, salt, sugar and turmeric powder. Then slowly add the water and mix it together to create a slurry. Make sure that it doesn't have any lumps. 

Heat oil. To it add the mustard and cumin seeds . Once the seeds begin to crackle add the garlic and chillies and cook them for a minute and then add the onions. Cook them till transparent. Then add the chick pea slurry in. Stir well and let it come to a boil. It tends to splatter, so use a splatter screen or a pan that is deep enough to catch the splatter. Let it boil for a couple of minutes and start to thicken. Keep stirring it frequently, so that it doesn't stick to the bottom. Cook it till it has a pudding consistency. Turn off heat. Serve hot with white rice or jowar bhakri.

Tips

Stir the slurry before you pour it in as the flour tends to settle. You can add spice like garam masala or gods masala to flavor it further, though I prefer it without any additional spices. You can also cook it till it is dry and serve is like a sabji.

Gulkand Sheera/Halwa - Rose flavored cream of wheat pudding

Sheera or halwa made with rava/semolina/cream of wheat is possibly the most popular sweet dish in India. Every household makes it and it is made as dessert of even as a breakfast dish. It is made as a sweet to celebrate special occasions. And many a times when someone shares good news, this is made on the spur of the moment to celebrate the news. You can add pineapple or another fruit to it to flavor it. If you want to make it rich, substitute half of the water with whole milk and increase the amount of clarified butter/ghee. Then add roasted slivered almonds and cashews to it to transform it into the most decadent dessert ever. You can find the orange colored version of it in many Indian restaurant buffets and it is called "kesari". Kesari is the color that you get when you add "kesar" aka saffron to the dish. In restaurants it is usually a food color that is added, but at home you can add a pinch of saffron to give it a royal feel. A versatile dessert called by many different names and everyone has a favorite version.

This time around,  I decided to give it a twist and make it rose flavored by adding a home made rose preserve that I made using the roses from my garden. The dessert had a lovely fragrance and a delicate rose flavor.

Ingredients 
1 cup rava/semolina/cream of wheat
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp of sugar
1/3 cup ghee
2 tbsp gulkand
2 cups water
2 tsp rose water
1/4 tsp cardamom powder
2 tbsp raisins
Rose petals for decoration

Method 
I am giving three different methods of cooking this.

Method 1
Roast the semolina/rava/cream of wheat till fragrant on medium heat in a dry pan. It should be lightly browned and at this point it will have a nutty roasted fragrance. In a deep saucepan, mix together the water, sugar. Cover and let it come to a boil. As soon as it starts boiling, add the roasted semolina into the water and stir well. And after a minute, turn off the heat. Cover the saucepan for 15 mins with a well fitting lid, letting it cook in the heat of the water. Then open the lid, add the ghee, cardamom powder, gulkand, raisins and mix them all in thoroughly and cover for 5 more minutes.  Once it is luke warm, stir in the rose water.

Method 2
Heat butter or ghee in a pan. Once hot, add the semolina/rava/cream of wheat and roast it till light brown and when you can smell the nutty flavor. Keep aside. Then mix together the water and sugar in a deep saucepan and let it come to a boil. Once it starts boiling, add the roasted semolina/rava/cream of wheat and stir well, let it cook for a minute and turn off the heat. Cover with a lid and let it cook in the heat for 15 minutes. Then open the lid, and add the cardamom powder, raisins, gulkand and mix them in thoroughly and cover it for another 5 minutes. Once luke warm, stir in the rose water.

Method 3
Heat butter or ghee in a deep pan. Once hot, add the semolina/rava/cream of wheat and roast it till light brown and when you can smell the nutty flavor. At the same time, heat the water, and bring it to a boil. Once the rava is roasted, pour the water onto the rava and mix it well. It will splatter a lot and this is the messiest of the three methods. Turn the heat to a low when pouring the water to minimize the splatter. Then stir it and cover it and let it cook on low heat for a few minutes till it fluffs up, stirring nad covering a couple of times. Then once it is cooked and fluffy, add the sugar and mix. It will dissolve and make the resultant mixture a little fluid. Keep cooking it till you get a drier texture. Then as it finished cooking add the cardamom powder, raisins, gulkand and mix them in thoroughly. Take it off the heat and cover it for 5 minutes and let it rest. Once luke warm, stir in the rose water.

The resultant sheera/pudding does not have an overpowering rose taste but a mild fragrant  rose flavor. You can serve this warm or at room temperature.

Here are the recipes to make ghee at home and gulkand at home using your garden roses.
Ghee/Clarified Butter
Gulkand/Rose Preserve

Tips
You can decrease or increase the amount of gulkand based on your taste Keep stirring the semolina/rava/cream of wheat  when roasting it, so that it doesn't burn. Once it starts to brown, reduce the heat a little else it is easy to burn it. You can buy the rose preserve, also called gulkand in the local store that sells Indian/Asian foods. You can also make it at home (see the link above). You may also find rose jam which you can also use. If you are unable to find the gulkand, substitute it with the same amount of sugar. And increase the rose water to 4 tsps.