Celebrating Sweetness
Recently I wrote about how the harvest of rice in Bengal brings with itself celebrations involving some very special delicacies, a lot of them for the sweet-tooth prone. One of these mouth-watering sweet dishes is this dessert made with sweet potato.
The filling is more or less the same as the one used for patishapta pithey . A subtle difference in the outer coating and the style of cooking, and you have a completely new dessert, one that can give some stiff competition to gulab jamoon even (try it and you will trust me).
So how about we get to the brass-tacks?
Ranga Alur Puli (Sweet potato dessert)
Ingredients:
For Puli Dough:
Sweet potatoes: 500 gms
Flour: 1 ½ tablespoons
For Stuffing:
Milk: ½ litre
Sugar: 1 tablespoon
Raisins
Coconut: ½ (grated)
Cardamom (green): 2-3
For Syrup:
Sugar: 1 cup
Water: 1 cup
Oil for frying
Method:
The Puli Dough:
Wash the potatoes and boil them until soft. Peel and mash. Add the flour and knead into dough. Keep aside.
The Stuffing:
Bring the milk to a boil by adding a tablespoon of sugar in it. When the milk starts to thicken, add the coconut and the raisins and condense it to a thick, sticky consistency. Remove from head and add crushed cardamoms. Let it cool.
The Syrup:
Add a cup of sugar to a cup of water and bring this to a boil. The syrup should be of medium consistency. Let it cool.
Making the pulis:
1. Take a small portion of the dough in your hands and flatten it. Make a cavity in the centre and fill it with a little of the stuffing.
2. Seal the edges of the dough and give it the shape of a puli (see image). Repeat with the rest of the dough.
3. Heat a lot of oil in a wok and deep fry the pulis in batches.
4. Remove from oil as pulis start browning.
5. Dip the pulis into the syrup carefully, one by one.
6. Serve hot or cold.
Not born with a sweet tooth, I don’t enjoy sweet potatoes…except for this sweet! This is truly a joy—the soft outer cover of potatoes and the creamy filling mesmerizing your gastronomic senses.
Prove me wrong! :P
Sury
posted by Sury at
8:01 PM
13 comment(s):
That looks delicious Sury...and you dont have a sweet tooth??? How can a Bengali even say something like that? :-)
By
Anonymous, at
10:50 PM
Lol, Ashwini. I make up for that with an excessive love for fish. :P
By
Anonymous, at
9:04 PM
I'm swooning! a naturally sweet dough filled with coconut-sugar kova, deep fried and then dipped in sugar syrup... wow, I'm imagining the taste. yum...
Is this a common Bengali sweet? I mean more common to find in a home or in a sweet shop?
I'm planning to prepare your 'patishapta pithey'. I almost memorised the name. :)
By
Anonymous, at
3:27 AM
Aww, thanks, Indira! This one is a sweet lover's delight for sure. And your imagination is bang on! As for its availability, this is more of a traditional sweet, prepared in households. These days some sweet shops are starting to include these in their repertoire though to cater to the time-constrained generation.
By
Anonymous, at
9:01 AM
am salivating seeing the pics. i tried once making it. it was a Disaster.
can i have a bite? :)
By
Anonymous, at
1:02 PM
Have two, Parna :) Kudos to you for attempting too. These sweets aren't so easy to make, and with practice you'll become an expert soon!
By
Anonymous, at
9:44 PM
Sury, this is a must-try. For me, Bengali mithai = rasgulla or malai sandwich. Sad, eh?! Then again, rasgulla and ras-malai are the only two Indian mithai that I really enjoy. Nevertheless I am intrigued by this recipe.
I have a few sweet potatoes sitting in my basement. A Patel Uncle who was stocking the produce section at Wal-mart insisted I buy them cos they were 25cents/lb - nowhere else will I get them cheaper. I bought them out of sheer respect for him. Now I know what to do with them. If the weeds in my yard don't have me pulling my own hair out, I will get to this recipe during the weekend.
Patishapta pithey. I love the name, too!
(PS. You have a typo in the 'Remember me?' phrase in your comment form. HTH!)
By
Anonymous, at
9:43 AM
Thanks for the comment and spotting that nasty typo, Manisha. I never noticed it! Unfortunately, I can't fix the typo; it's part of the blog's settings, I suppose.
I do hope the weeds don't pull you away from the kitchen and you get to try out this recipe. Do try patishapta too, if you can. I am sure you will like them both :).
Do let me know how it turns out! Just btw, what is HTH?
By
Anonymous, at
11:37 AM
Sury, if you are using Blogger's comments then you can write to them and let them know. If you are using a third-party comment plug-in then see if you can edit the template for that. If not, write to them and let them know.
The weeds are driving me nuts. Now that we have put fertilizer+weed killer, I have to give up hopes of trying out dandelion salad using the flowers and leaves and wine from the roots. :-D The whole neighborhood could have feasted and we'd still have leftovers - there are that many!!
HTH = Hope That/This Helps.
You can use http://slang.acronymfinder.com/ to find out the meaning of acronyms. One that my nephew used on me recently was POS. And he thought I wouldn't know. It means Parent Over Shoulder.
By
Anonymous, at
1:14 PM
Thanks for the heads up on the comments thing, Manisha. I will write a note to Blogger.
Poor you, battling the weeds there. I hope you can be rid of them for good soon. *Passes some clover*.
And many thanks for the handy link! Just my kind of stuff to look into for enhancing Internet lingo prowess. POS! That one's hilarious! lol. Kids are almost always the most ingenious source of fresh slang and jargon, aren't they?
By
Anonymous, at
7:56 PM
Sury, your recipe sounds absolutely delicious! Can hardly wait to try it. I'm sorry you don't like sweet potatoes. They're one of my favorite foods. Perhaps my website at http://www.All-About-Sweet-Potatoes.com may help change your mind.
By
Anonymous, at
8:50 PM
Ellen, welcome to our blog! Wow, a whole website on sweet potatoes. I am sure that would change my opinion on them potatoes pretty soon. So glad you dropped by. What a discovery your website is!
By
Sury, at
10:19 PM
Hi Sury,
I am a vegan so you can imagine my delight when I found that I could make vegan jamuns!
I tried it out this weekend.. and I guess I must have done somethin wrong! I wanted to make the jamuns without the filling for starters. I added more flour than I should have.. the moisture from the mashed potato was way too much so I kept adding flour! The jamuns did not absorb the syrup too well.. :(
Please tell me the measure of mashed potatoes and flour I gotto use to make the perfect vegan jamuns!
Thanks in advance!
Bindu
Australia
By
Anonymous, at
2:09 PM
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