Paal Poli

You may all have been indulged in festive feast created by fellow bloggers yesterday which marked the Aavani avittam and the Raksha Bandhan. I feasted my eyes on Jayashree's and Shoba's aavani avittam spread. It will be impertinent if I posted one today. So let me just give you one recipe relevent to the ocassion. I cooked a simple meal with vegetable, sambhar and the usual befitting a festival meal. Vadai and sweet were extra but essential.

Paal poli recipe goes thus, for 12 polis.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup chiroti rawa or very fine semolina

2 tablespoons ground almonds

a pinch of salt

600 ml milk

150 grams sugar

1 teaspoon cardamom powder

few strands of saffron

Ghee for deep frying

How to prepare:

Mix semolina, almond powder and salt with water and make a stiff dough. You may also soak few almonds, grind them and add to the semolina to make the dough adjusting the quantity of water accordingly. Cover with a damp cloth and keep aside for 1/2 an hour.

Knead the dough well repeatedly and make it pliable.

Put milk to boil in a pan and allow to continue boiling until it reduces to 2/3 the original volume.

Add the sugar, cardamom powder and saffron. Keep on very low heat allowing it to thicken further.

Make marble size balls and dusting with as little flour as possible roll out thin discs. Fold in half, press along the edges alone.

While you are rolling out these discs, heat ghee in a heavy pan.

By the time all the discs are rolled and folded, the ghee would have reached optimum heat.

Deep fry the rolled out puris in the ghee until well done.

Remove with a slotted spoon and dip directly in the warm milk.

By the time the second set is fried, the first dropped puris would have soaked enough in the milk.

Gently remove them from the milk and arrange on a flat plate.

Soak the next batch and so on. If the earlier batches were not soaked enough, you may leave them a wee bit longer before removing.

Finally when all the puris have been removed and placed separated on a plate, pour the remaining milk over them.

Serve warm or chilled as desired.