Dates & Sesame Poli

I rarely try out traditional festive dishes. I am not so confident in these. I might make these tasty. But always compare them to my mom's and feel inferior. But sometimes I feel I should make some of these atleast so that I might make these festivals memorable to my daughter. And almost all festivals have more food associated with them than rituals.

Last week was Holi  the festival of colours. People colour each others and obviously enjoy food and drinks like Thandaai. More than being a participant, I like to watch the celebrations. I somehow can't imagine myself drenched in colours. Puran poli is an excellent dish associated with this festival. Its a pan fried flatbread stuffed with a sweet lentil filling and you serve it as a dessert. You can learn more about it here. 

Ofcourse there are lots of other festive dishes but this is most loved by me especially when made by my mother. Every time we plan a holiday, my daughter also requests for this. Anyways, being a bit short of time to make the original,I  tried a slightly different poli (flatbread) stuffed with dates and sesame filling and adapted  from Tarla Dalal site.

Ingredients:

Whole Wheat Flour: 1 cup

Milk: 4-6 tbsp 

Water: 1-2 tbsp as needed

Filling: 

Sesame: 2 tbsp toasted

Dates: finely chopped and slightly mashed : 1 cup loosely packed

Brown Sugar: 4 tbsp

Milk: 1-2 tbsp (optional)

Preparation:

Mix together flour and milk and knead to form a pliable dough adding more milk or water as needed.It should be like a roti dough -if you are familiar with rotis ie. Divide the dough into 3 medium pieces, shape each into a roud ball and keep aside.

Prepare the filling by mixing together toasted sesame,coarsely chopped and mashed dates and brown sugar or gur (jaggery) to form a stiff sticky yet mostly dry filling. Add milk if needed.You can use jaggery syrup or dates paste to make this and adjust accordingly. Divide the filling nto 3 small portions. The measurements for the filling gives you slightly more quantity than needed.

Take a rounded dough ball. Roll it out to a small disc, place a filling portion in the centre of the dough disc, bring together the edges of the disc towards the centre and seal tightly completely covering the filling.

Take this disc,dust it with little wheat flour and roll it out to a bigger disc,making sure the filling does not come out. Repeat with the other discs to get 3 stuffed flatbreads.

Cook each poli/bread disc on a non stick pan for a few seconds on each sides till brown.You can drizzle ghee/clarified butter during this or even while taking off the pan to make it more rich.

Serve warm as a dessert optionally garnished or cut into wedges ad serve to kids with milk as an healthy evening snack.

My polis were better than expected though I could have used more filling. I am somehow scared to roll out a stuffed poli and so went for a smaller amount of filling. But this being my first attempt at a stuffed poli  I am definitely happy. I would be repeating this again as it has definitely given me more confidence and its easy to make.