Suruttai Poli / Sweet Rolls - Indian Cooking Challenge

I'm back to Indian cooking challenge and for my surprise my sweet buddy Srivalli had asked me to suggest a recipe for the challenge too :) Had a long session of discussion with my home "Top chef"(mom) and decided to suggest this sweet called - Suruttai poli :)

Surrutai poli is a lovely sweet that my family has seen for years. The rolled shape which resembles a cigar is the attraction factor. The mild sweetness with the crunchy texture makes this a wonderful sweet on the whole.

Though the process is a little tricky, once mastered this will surely reach your favorites list :)

Recipe for the filling:

Ingredients:

Roasted gram(Pottu Kadalai) - 1 cup

Sugar - 1 cup

Cashews - 20

Cardamom powder - 1 tsp

Coconut (scrapped) - 1 tblsp

Ghee - 1 tsp

Method:

Powder the roasted gram and sugar together. Chop the cashews into small pieces.

Take a pan and tsp of ghee in it and roast cut cashews and coconut for few mins until the cashews turn golden brown.

Mix all ingredients in a bowl.

The filling is ready. Keep this aside.

Recipe for making the Poli(Papad):

Ingredients:

All purpose flour(Maida) - 1 cup

Salt - a pinch

Oil - for deep frying

Method: (semi step-wise pic above)

Mix all purpose flour and salt in a bowl. Add water to it little by little and kneed them into a dough. Consistency should be like chapathi dough. Leave it aside for half an hour.

Now divide the dough into equal parts and roll into small balls. Flour the surface and roll the dough into very thin circles of 10cm diameter. The thickness of the circles should be like papad(appalam). It should be almost semi transparent. If you make it thick, it would puff up like poori when fried. This appalam can have small bubbles here and there but should not puff up totally. After you roll them into circles spread them on paper and leave it aside for ten mins.

Now deep fry them in hot oil turning once to cook both sides and remove them when they are just half cooked.(about ten seconds) It should be flexible and should not turn brown or crispy.(This is the tricky part)

Once you remove them from oil place it on a plate and immediately spread 1 tblsp of filling (recipe above) on the papad and roll it tight and keep it on a plate with seem side facing down. (Caution - the papad is piping hot so work quickly)

The rolls would be soft when made, but would become crispy once they are allowed to cool.

The challenge in making this sweet is the speed in which you work while rolling the fried papad.

Suruttai poli is ready to eat :)

This quantity would yield 15 surrutai poli.

Store them in air tight containers and enjoy for a week.

Note - How to eat the broken poli or ones that are soft?

This sweet is quite tricky and getting the right crispy consistency needs practice. But there is no harm going wrong. You still can enjoy eating them.

Take the broken ones or the soft ones in a bowl and add some badam flavored milk(or plain milk with sugar) to it and allow it to get soaked for few mins. Now cut them with a spoon and enjoy eating :)

Written by: Nithya
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