Puran Poli

Story: My policy about Puran Poli - खाईन तर तूपाशी, नाही तर उपाशी! If I will eat a meal, it will be with ghee or I won't eat at all!

Don't you agree? - If something's worth doing - it is worth doing right - if you want to eat Puran Poli - stop thinking about calories.. drench the sweet poli in pure desi ghee.. (or milk if you like it that way) and enjoy the feeling. Otherwise - why eat Puran Poli at all? :-)

I will pay my dues in the gym, compensate with lots of salad in other meals - but for certain special meals - I want the real deal or nothing at all!

Why worry about sugar-free, fat-free - छोडो ना यार - sometimes you ought to be care-free :-)

On that note - let's hog on some garama-garam Holi-Poli - Puran Poli - shall we?


Source: Evolved version of my Mom's recipe
Time: 6 hours - preferably split over two days
Ingredients: for 20 Puran Polis

• 1 cup chana daal
  
• 1 cup jaggery - shredded or sliced finely
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg powder
  
• 1/2 tsp cardamom powder
• 3-4 saffron strands
• 1 cup aata or wheat flour
• 1/2 cup maida or all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup milk mixed with a few saffron strands
  
• 1/2 cup Oil

Recipe:

Day 1: Puran recipe

Cook chana daal in the pressure cooker with two cups of water. For the right consistency of puran it is very important that to cook the daal thoroughly. Once this is done, save the extra water from cooked daal to make कटाची आमटी - a special daal with puran flavor.

Heat a non-stick pan on slow-medium flame. Add cooked daal and jaggery. Stir this mixture constantly till jaggery is melted and mixed with daal completely. Add sugar to the mixture and keep stirring (I missed patience in the ingredient list). You need to continue stirring for about 10-15 minutes till the puran becomes dry and sticks to the sides of the pan. Mash the puran the best you can while stirring it to get smooth consistency. Test the right consistency this way - if you stick a tea-spoon in the puran, it should stand straight up. चमचा उभा राहीला पाहिजे! In India we use a special machine - पूरण यंत्र to make the puran extra soft. Being away from home - this is my way of compensating for it.

Turn the heat off. Add nutmeg powder, cardamom powder and saffron strands and stir well for 3-5 minutes.

Puran is done - let it cool. Then store it in air tight container in the fridge.

Day 2: Making aata and poli

Sift the aata and maida through a fine sieve. Mix in saffron milk and water as needed to make a stiff dough. Keep it covered for an hour or so.

Then add a pinch of salt, a touch of water and knead the dough thoroughly. As it becomes soft, add oil one tbsp at a time and keep kneading till the dough incorporates the oil. By the end of this process the dough should have an elastic, stretchy and super-soft consistency.

Now you are ready to make the poli..

Make puran balls of roughly 1 inch diameter each and keep them covered so they don't become dry. Take a small lemon size portion of aata and very little oil on your fingers. With both hands hold the aata ball and push your thumbs inside while shaping the sides with your fingers alone. This should turn the aata ball into an aata bowl. Place the puran ball in the aata bowl and close it similar to aloo parantha. Coat this puran-aata ball with a little bit of maida and press with hand to flatten it a bit. This will spread the puran uniformly. Now roll this into a thin Puran Poli as usual with your rolling pin.

Roast on hot tawa/pan for roughly 20 secs on each side or till the poli gets brown spots. Add ghee while heating the poli if you plan to eat it fresh.. otherwise add ghee just before serving. If you have potato sabji and katachi aamti to go with it - that's perfect!