A sweet gift of winter: From til laddoos to puran poli to sweet pongal, the versatile gur finds a place in many harvest festivals

Rahul Verma

On my way back from Dehradun to Delhi some days back, I was happy to see ‘boggies’ laden with sugarcane, making their way to sugar factories. Some, as I knew from my early years spent in a sugarcane-rich area, would be unloaded at the crushers, where gur, or jaggery, is produced. This, after all, is the season that celebrates harvests across the country with festivals, marked with large dollops or chunks of gur.

This modest, but immensely versatile product, finds a place in festivals such as Lohri, Sankranti and Pongal. I, for one, can’t imagine Lohri without picturing a cheerful bonfire, surrounded by happy folks eating til-gur laddoos — prepared with sesame seeds and jaggery. East India’s Paush Sankranti always brings to my mind thin crepes made of rice or flour, stuffed with coconut and thickened milk, flavoured and coloured with gur. And, I can’t think of winter without remembering our cook Narayan Singh’s gulgule — a basic but memorable sweet prepared with wheat and gur.

For me, this season is all about the senses — I remember the sight of large heaps of sugarcane being assembled, the heady smell of fresh jaggery being prepared in our village, and, of course, the taste of fresh gur.

In eastern India, the date palm gur — called patali — is equally celebrated. This special jaggery goes into various kinds of sweets — such as kheer — to mark festivals. I think the date palm gur of Kerala is as good as Bengal. I can’t ever forget the region’s special kheer that a friend prepared with this gur for us some years ago. Parts of India revel in varieties of puran poli, made from flour, lentil and jaggery, while the South has its sweet pongal, prepared with rice, lentils, jaggery and ghee. The role of gur in our traditional sweets is not surprising, for we have had a long and rich association with it. History tells us that while the sugarcane was mentioned in ‘Rig Veda’, ‘guda’ emerged a millennium later in Sutra literature. The word is derived from Gauda, which was the name for parts of eastern India centuries ago.

But the interesting bit about gur is that it can be used innovatively too. I have eaten — and enjoyed — gur-infused salted caramel kheer prepared with barnyard millets, and a superb ice-cream, flavoured with patali gur. And because of the texture and flavours that gur lends to dishes, many great chefs have been using it for entrees, too.

A Kolkata chef I know used patali gur to prepare mutton, cooked with winter onion and new potatoes. He balanced the sweetness of gur with lime juice, tamarind and chillies.

This, however, is the season for sweets. A friend got us some peanut-and-gur chikki, and despite the fact that it leaves my teeth grumbling, I have been cheerfully biting into it. I will mark Lohri with chikki and gur-ki-rewri, and then savour some patishapta — rice flour crepes with a gur-flavoured filling — for Sankranti. Gur is good for the health, and good to taste. It’s very gur, as the dad joke goes.

Gulgule

Ingredients

Gur ½ cup

Water 1 cup

Atta (flour) 1½ cup

Green cardamom seeds (crushed) ¼ tsp

Fennel seeds (sounf) ¼ tsp

Oil or ghee For frying

Method

• Heat water in a pan. Add gur to it. Allow it to melt completely. Strain the liquid to remove any impurities. Let it cool.
• Now make a batter with the atta and the liquid gur.
• Keep whisking it to ensure there are no lumps. The consistency should be thicker than a dosa batter.
• Heat the oil or ghee in a karahi. When hot, add little dollops of the batter into it.
• Make sure these don’t touch one another. Take these out of oil when crisp & golden.
• Keep on absorbent paper towels to drain the oil. Serve hot.