Rediff Logo find
Travel

    HOME | TRAVEL | TRAVELOG

INDIA GUIDE
TRAVEL DESK
EVENTS
AIRLINES
SEARCH



sweet mart
Meetha Khazana
... Diwali is the season for sweet making

A fortnight before the Diwali festivities begin, housewives all over India set about sweeping and scrubbing down their houses. Many have their homes repainted with sparkling white chuna. or lime. The practical angle of this being that the home and the kitchen is cleared of any dirt or micro-organisms that may have accumulated after a sweltering, hot summer and a long, humid monsoon.

And then, the herculean tasks of grinding, roasting, rolling, chopping, frying and basting to produce huge baskets of sweets begin. Nuts are ground to a fine powder and kneaded with sugar, ghee or clarified butter and khoya ( a type of evaporated milk) to make barfis. Besan or chickpea flour is roasted in ghee and thickened with sugar syrup to make besan laddus. White flour dough is rolled out into all imaginable shapes, stuffed with raisins and grated cocounut, deep fried and then coated with sugar. And a legion of fragrant laddus, khajas, barfis and balushais emerge from the kitchens of every home.

Most of these recipes have been handed down over generations. Which is why, it is quite possible that, for the last five decades, besan laddus have been made in exactly the same manner.

Each region in India is famous for its own variety of sweets made specifically for Diwali. Rediff Travel presents a collection of sweet recipes from the various states and regions of India, including the former province of Sindh, where Diwali is celebrated. These are all recipes for homemade sweets collected from grannies and ammas and housewives in the know. And they are all very traditional... one
hundred per cent.

Bihar Maharashtra Rajasthan
Gujarat Mangalore Sindh
Haryana Palakkad Tamil Nadu
Madhya Pradesh Punjab Uttar Pradesh





HOME | NEWS | BUSINESS | CRICKET | MOVIES | CHAT
INFOTECH | TRAVEL | LIFE/STYLE | FREEDOM | FEEDBACK