Puran poli (Marathi/Konkani) or obbattu (Kannada) must be one of the most popular sweets in Karnataka and Maharashtra. Usually it is not always possible to make the outer wrap or the stuffing in exact amounts. Many different dishes can be made with such left over things. The most popular among them is HooraNada saru , also called as obbattina saru .
HooraNa is the sweetish stuffing used in puran poli . Usually people cook a little more chana daal while making this dish to prepare a delicious saru . There are many recipes for this saru and they all are very tasty and very popular. The one I am posting is the Kannada version of it prepared by my friend Poornima , I will post my mom’s version soon.
Recently one of my readers asked for this recipe. When I read that request, I remembered this recipe which Poornima had mailed me long back. I had prepared this a couple of times. Since I don’t make puran polis very frequently, I cooked daal just to make this saru . This was very delicious. Just make sure to cook more rice whenever you cook this, you can’t just stop eating :).
While making puran poli stuffing, all the water is drained out to make the stuffing very dry. This drained water is used for saru . It is prepared in same pan used for cooking daal and jaggery together, so that saru gets some thickness from the chana daal mixture and gets a tinge of sweetness.
See Vaishali’s Kataachi aamti .
Ingredients: 1/4 cup chana daal 1/2 cup fresh/frozen coconut 3/4 cup chopped onion 1 tea spn finely chopped garlic 1/4 tea spn tamarind extract or 2-3 pieces of tamarind 2-3 strands of coriander leaves 1-2 tea spns sambar powder 1/2 tea spn mustard seeds 4-5 curry leaves Oil Salt
I use very less tamarind in my cooking. This dish requires a little more tamarind, so increase it to suit the taste.
Method: Heat a little oil in a pan and fry 1/4 cup onion till it turns slightly brownish. Grind this with coconut, sambar powder, tamarind, cooked daal and 1/4 cup raw onion to a smooth paste. In the same pan that is used to cook jaggery and chana daal for puran poli , take all the drained water from the daal . Add 1/4 cup onion and let it cook. Add the paste, garlic, salt, chopped coriander leaves and cook till it boils well for around 5-6 mins. Heat oil and add mustard seeds. When it starts popping, add curry leaves. Add this seasoning to the saru . Mix well and cook for another 2-3mins.
Notes: Do not refrigerate this saru . In the night, heat it well, while heating, do not mix it with spoon ( I think this helps to set the daal , not sure). In the morning, heat it again to ensure it does not get spoiled. The taste of this dish increases as time passes. If it remains for the 3rd day, it tastes the best.
Serves : 3-4 Preparation time : 20mins
This Thursday was the last class of course-1, it was basically a practice of making roses. I was very excited as well as sad that day, since the classes for course-1 got over. I enrolled for the course-2 which starts in April first week.
Now coming to the last cake; this week was one of the most pressurized weeks at my office. There were some unexpected problems in the project and I was really stressed, more than that I was suffering from an eye infection. So Wednesday when it was time to bake and ice the cake, I was totally exhausted. In any case, I didn’t want to miss this class, so I came home a bit early from office on Wenesday. I got this great idea of baking some different cake this time. So I followed a dark chocolate cake recipe from one of the cookbooks that I had. The cake turned out to be a total disaster – my first spoiled cake. First of all, it had become dark from outside, it was not baked from inside and it had sunk in the center. It was already late and I had no mood to bake it again. So I thought of using the same cake for my class.
Now the problem was, which color to use for icing so that the black color was not visible. I didn’t want a chocolaty icing because I didn’t want to put roses on chocolate icing. So I thought of using a very dark color for icing. It demanded almost 4 times more icing than what normally would have taken, to cover up the sunken center. I could not make it very smooth because of shortage of time. Finally when I took it to class on Thursday, I was ashamed to show it to anyone.
I somehow managed to make the roses even though my eyes were really bothering me. Everyone said I had done a good job, even though my cake looked very unprofessional. I was thinking not to post it here, but this would remind me of things not-to-do in future. So it is here.
Even after all these, I am really happy with my roses. They looked beautiful. I need a lot more practice to make perfect roses, but these were very good, may be above my expectation.
