IF I let my imagination soar, I can hear a strange whirring sound around me. It’s a pleasant sound, for it means coconuts are being grated somewhere. And if grated coconut is here, can Holi be far behind?
Every festival of ours celebrates sweets, and Holi has its own signature mouth-watering delicacies. Coconuts are often an important ingredient in a sweet. Take gujhiya, which most of us tend to associate with Holi. This, as we know, is a crispy, fried maida and suji pastry. In many parts of the country, the filling consists of grated coconut, peppered with raisins and nuts.
Thandai
As winter elbows out and summer is round the corner, thandai plays an important role, and the choice of ingredients is unlimited — from the traditional to a heady mix
In the North, you will find gujhiyas, laddoos and malpuas being prepared for Holi. The Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) gujhiya is a dry pastry with a filling of grated coconut, walnuts and sugar. Gulguley are another Holi special, as are namak parey, kachori and puran poli. But these are the usual Holi fare we always hear about — and get our teeth into — during the season. What’s interesting is the fact that the festival revels in quite a few hidden treasures, too.
Malpua with Rabri
A friend from Odisha has been regaling me with stories about the food that is served during Holi or Dol — as the festival is known there — in his house. In some parts of the state, the gods come visiting during Dol. The local priest brings Krishna and Radha idols in a gaily decorated palanquin to your house, along with a retinue of devotees. The family members eagerly wait for the procession to reach the house, and then welcome the gods with an offering of freshly prepared sweets.
My friend’s family in Odisha then greets the priest and other devotees with a plate heaped with sweets — boondi laddoo, some suji-based kakara pitha (see recipe), arisa pitha (prepared with soaked rice, jaggery and grated coconut) and karanji, which is somewhat like North India’s gujhiya. The thali may also include luchis or maida pooris with a chana and aloo sabzi, and a chakuli pitha, a savoury dosa-like rice-and-lentil crepe.
The visitors are also given a drink called pana — the simple version consists of water and jaggery; more elaborate versions have milk, yoghurt, nuts, bananas and so on. And if you — or your guests — feel up to it, some bhaang can always be added to the pana or thandai, a cool, refreshing milk-based drink served in many parts of the country, with or without bhaang. Liquor, clearly, is an integral part of the festival. In Kinnaur, a local wine is distilled and enjoyed during Holi.
In this season, when winter has been elbowed out and summer is round the corner, thandai plays an important role. A good glass of thandai is the result of a lot of painstaking work. First, dry fruits — almonds and cashew nuts — are soaked overnight or for several hours. Then, after the almond is peeled and the skin discarded, the nuts are ground well. Poppy seeds and char magaz seeds are soaked as well and then finely ground and mixed with the nuts. Into this mix, a paste of fennel seeds, green cardamom, black pepper and rose leaves is added. With some milk, a smooth paste is made out of this. Then, large amounts of milk are boiled with sugar. The ground ingredients are added to the milk, and the liquid is strained and then chilled. And you may serve this with a little rose petal floating on it for its fragrance and visual appeal. Those who make bhaang thandai usually first grind the bhaang. In the olden days, it was said that if you ground it with a copper coin, it became more potent. The bhaang is then tied in a soft cloth bundle. This bundle is squeezed in the thandai, adding its essence to the milk drink.
Bhaang, of course, is an essential part of the festival. In my salad days, I once spent a happy day after having some thandai mixed with bhaang, laughing for several hours, demolishing a large loaf of bread and devouring a countless number of bananas. Then I spent many hours standing under a shower. One, of course, should be careful about intoxicants, and their impact. A close relative had an encounter with bhaang that he remembered for decades after that. A keen violinist, he recalls playing the violin with a bow till the impact wore off. It was then that he realised he neither had the violin, nor a bow, but had played an imaginary fiddle for hours.
The wonderful bit about our festivals is that there is no uniformity about them. There are people in Odisha who insist that Holi is not much of a festival there at all, a sentiment that many in Assam would agree with. But in some Assamese communities, the festival is celebrated with nakur dana (tiny sugar lumps) and batasha, a white, sugary sweet, and the prasad is a simple preparation of rice and bananas. Some mark the festival with a dish called ranga dim — or a red egg. This is essentially a boiled egg, which is fried after being dredged with masalas, including turmeric powder and red chilli powder, which give the egg its colour.
In Delhi and elsewhere in the North, particularly Rajasthan, kanji vada is popular. The festival in parts of Punjab is celebrated with gajar ki kanji, says Chef Ravi Saxena, who runs a fleet of restaurants, including Dhaba by Claridges. The simple but delectable fare in Haryana includes shakkar-chawal-dahi, pakodas, gujhiyas, etc — but no variations of rotis as the use of the tawa is avoided, says Chef Ashwani Singh, of Cook Pro 6 YouTube channel.
In Jharkhand and parts of Bihar, a crispy pastry called dhuska is a Holi special. This is a delicious snack prepared with ground rice, urad dal and chana dal. The dals are mixed, ground, turned into a thick batter, tempered with hing, chillies, etc, and then deep fried. It is served with an aloo sabzi or a green, hot-and-tart chutney. The region also has a tradition of making moong dal kachoris, which are served with a kathal (green jackfruit) sabzi and dahi vada. In Bengal, Holi, called Dol there too, is celebrated with different kinds of malpuas cooked with bananas (see recipe) and smeared or filled with kheer.
In many festive homes, meat and fish are a must. Meat, for instance, is savoured all across Himachal. Kolkata chef Pradip Rozario says muri ghonto (fish head cooked with rice) is a Holi must-have for most Bengalis. For this, he cleans and then marinates a fish head with garlic and ginger, turmeric, red chilli, dhania powder, lime juice and salt. He fries it, breaks it into pieces, and keeps them aside. He steams Bengal’s aromatic Gobindobhog rice. When the rice is half done, he adds the fish head pieces to it, and lets the rice cook with some water. When done, he sprinkles roasted cumin powder and chopped coriander leaves over it. He switches off the flame, covers the lid to let it steam. And then he serves it hot on Holi for lunch.
Some of my close friends celebrate Holi with a lip-smacking communal meal. They cook at home a handi full of goat meat curry — with tender pieces of meat and succulent potatoes in a rich and red gravy. The rest of the guests bring to the table various kinds of side dishes — masoor dal with palak, gobhi-aloo, mini samosas with minced meat stuffing, and so many more. And, of course, there are all sorts of sweets, syrupy or dry. All in all, it’s a happy meal. And that, I think, is Holi in a nutshell.
Happy Holi, make a feast of it!
Banana Malpua.
Banana malpua
Ingredients
Maida 2 cups
Sugar 1 cup
Ripe bananas (mashed) 2
Fennel seeds A pinch
Green cardamom
seeds (crushed) A pinch
Milk for the batter
Ghee for kneading
White refined oil for frying
Method
Mix 2 tablespoons of ghee with maida. Add mashed ripe banana and sugar to it. Pour some milk into it to make a thick batter. Add the fennel seeds and cardamom seeds to this batter. Heat oil in a pan for frying. Ladle out a spoonful of the batter into the oil. When it puffs up and turns a light shade of cream and brown, take it out, and serve it as it is, or after dipping it in sugar syrup.
Kakara Pitha.
Kakara pitha
Ingredients
Suji 1 cup
Sugar ½ cup
Green cardamom (crushed) 1 tsp
Salt A pinch
Water 2 cups
Ghee 2 tbsp
Bay leaves 2
Oil for frying
For the stuffing
Freshly grated coconut 1 cup
Cardamon powder 1 tsp
Jaggery ¼ cup
Method
Heat water in a pan. Add sugar. Lower the flame, stirring now and then. Add bay leaves, green cardamom and salt. Add suji slowly into the water. Keep stirring to avoid any lumps. After a while, suji will soak in the water and become a thick mass. Cook for a few minutes, and then take it out of the pan, and place it on a thali. Discard bay leaves. Let the suji cool. In a pan, cook the freshly grated coconut with jaggery, flavouring it with cardamom powder. This is the stuffing for the pitha. Keep it aside. Take the suji that has been laid out on a plate. Add some ghee and knead it. Make small balls out of this suji dough. Make a dent in each ball and put some of the coconut stuffing in it. Grease your palms, and make a small roti-like shape of the ball. Pinch the sides so that the filling doesn’t spill out. Fry and serve hot.
