A Glutton’s Festival: Try These 5 Delicious Holi Recipes at Home

Holi may be about the colours, but it is also about the mouth-watering gujiyas, puran poli and thandai!

Try your hand at these delicacies! (Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; iStock)

Yes! Holi maybe about the colours, the pichkaris, the water-balloons but it is also about the mouth-watering delicacies that mark this festival. In fact there are some dishes which are a part of the celebrations since ages and are considered synonymous with the festival. We bring you a list of traditional foods that are a must on Holi!

Gujiyas

(Photo: iStock; Card created by The Quint)

For the Dough:

For the gujiya coating, mix the flour, water and ghee and knead into a stiff dough.
Set aside for a few minutes.

For the Filling:

Grate coconut and cook in a large utensil. Add sugar and mawa and mix the ingredients well.
After the mixture gets cooked, add sugar and cardamon powder.
Top it with raisins and cashews.
Cook till the mixture becomes one.
Let the mixture cool.
In the meantime, prepare small thin pooris for the gujiya. Add the coconut filling and form into a pastry.
Heat oil in a pan and fry the gujiyas till golden brown.
Drain the excess oil with a tissue.

Your lip smacking gujiyas are ready!

Dahi Vada

(Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; Card created by The Quint)

Procedure:

Soak the urad dal for 2 hours.
Combine the urad dal, ginger and salt in a mixer and grind to a smooth paste. You can also add finely chopped green chillies to the batter.
Heat oil in a pan for frying and drop small balls of batter in the oil with the help of a spoon.
Drop small balls of the batter and fry them till golden brown.
Drain out the excess oil from the vadas with a tissue.
Soak the vadas in water for 15 minutes.

For the Dahi:

Combine the curd with sugar and salt depending on how sour the curd is.
You can also add crushed ginger to the curd.
Now add the vadas to the curd.

To Serve:

Garnish the vadas dipped in curd with chilli powder, cumin powder, tamarind chutney and black salt.

You are sure to love it!

Namak Pare

(Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; Card created by The Quint)

To prepare:

Mix flour, sooji, salt, carom seeds, coarsely ground pepper corns and oil and water to make into a dough.
Make small balls and roll into a flat bread dough.
Make diamond like cuts in the flat bread dough.
Heat oil in a pan.
Fry the diamond shaped namak paras until golden brown.
Strain them on a tissue paper to remove excess oil.
Serve once cooled.

The crispy namak pare are sure to make your Holi much more delicious.

Thandai

(Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; Card created by The Quint)

To prepare:

Prepare a powder of almonds, poppy seeds and cardamon.
Mix this into the milk and refrigerate.
Strain the mixture and add sugar, saffron and pepper and mix well.
Pour the mixture into a glass.
Serve chilled.

Puran Poli

(Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; Card created by The Quint)

To prepare the puran:

Pressure cook the chana dal for half an hour.
Once the dal is cooked, strain the cooked dal.
Add sugar to this mixture and stir at regular intervals.
Mash the dal and sugar with a potato masher until it becomes a thick paste.
Add cardamon and nutmeg powder.
Let the mixture cool.

To prepare the poli:

Use the wheat flour, salt and oil to make dough.
Place the puran mixture into the centre of the rolled dough.
Start rolling this into polis/chapatis.
Make sure the mixture does not come out of the chapatis.
Cook the puran polis on a hot tawa/pan.
Once brown, add dollops of ghee to the poli.

The more the ghee, the better your poli tastes. It’s time to put on some holiday weight.

(A freelance food and fashion blogger, Pranjali Bhonde Pethe aims at getting people and their favourite food and style closer through her blog moipalate. Email her at [e-mail] and follow her on @moipalate.)