The Hardest Part

It was holi last weekend. It reminded me of Mom's puran polis, I used to eat so many of them, my stomach used to go smokin' joes. Our bai used to make them, when Mom was busy with work, but she never got the right taste and crispiness, and I used to cajole Mom to make them herself.

This time I thought of making myself, but it turned out to be a monumental effort. The first difficult thing was getting the "puran", which is the stuffing, right. Its a mix of chana dal and jaggery, and needs quite some work to get the right fineness of the mix. It took me a wait of a night to let it dry properly. Making the flour with the right thickness turned out another adventure. It didn't stop there, rolling out circular shaped puran polis with thin crust seemed next to impossible. Somehow managed to get 5-6 of them correct.

But, they turned out less sweet than expected. At this point, I lost it. So there I was, with two things left, lot of puran and no patience. And then I got a idea. I thought, why not make "karanjis" with puran as the stuffing...it would take much less effort, cause making the cover for karanjis is as simple as cutting circular shapes from the ready-to-cook tortilla. So on a nice sunday afternoon, with coffee jar lid as the shape cutter, I set out to make it to the finish line.

But, these buts...they never stop, the tortilla flour dried up fast, and by the time I was frying the karanjis, some of them started folding out...looking like a time lapse clip of a blossoming flower!

Somehow I managed to get some of them to fry correctly. So now things were right, the sweetness and fineness of the mix, and the hard crispy cover...albeit with a shift-of-origin. What started as a endeavor to make puran polis ended up in the discovery of a new dish, christened puran karanji !

Moral of the story...I knew my Mom was a good cook, but now I realize, she does magic.