Surati Ghari
Ghari or Surati Ghari is a sweet Gujarati dish from Surat, Gujarat, India. Ghari is made of puri batter, pistachio, almond, cardamom , milk mawa, ghee and sugar to be consumed on Chandani Padva festival.
There is a history behind Ghari. Ghari was prepared by the Devshankar Shukla for Tatya Tope to provide extra strength to the freedom fighter’s soldiers in 1857 on a full moon day which is now celebrated as chandi padwa. However, it began to be consumed during inauspicious occasions too.
Chandi Padwa is one of very popular festival of Surati people. Surati people eat lots and lots of ghari with surati bhusu, mix of spicy and salty snacks which goes very well with the sweet gharis under the shiny full moon! Huge amount of gharis gets made in Surat during Chandi Padwa which is a big business, it helps many small and big vendor to make decent amount of money during this festival time!
My mother has always made gharis at home. This is her recipe. It takes lots of patience to make these as these are very delicate sweets. The biggest lesson I have learnt from my mother is Patience, not just with cooking. Patience for everything in life! I am still not where my mother is with patience, but I am learning and will get better as time goes!
I got Deep brand major ingredients like ghee, milk mawa powder, ladu besan and all purpose flour. You can use any brand!
My family absolutely loves this sweet, hope yours does too!
Happy and Healthy Eating!
Surati Ghari
Ingredients
Milk Mawa
- 2 cup Milk Mawa Powder https://www.amazon.com/Milk-Mava-Powder-14-oz/dp/B004KFJJYOhttps://www.amazon.com/Milk-Mava-Powder-14-oz/dp/B004KFJJYO
- ½ cup Whole .Milk
- 2 tbsp Ghee
- 1 pinch Saffron
Chickpea Flour Mix
Ghari Filling
- ½ cup Dry Grainy Powdered Sugar
- ¼ cup Coarsely Chopped Pistachio
- ¼ cup Coarsely Chopped Almonds
- 1 tsp Cardamom Powder
Ghari Covering
- 1 cup All Purpose Flour https://www.amazon.com/All-Purpose-Flour-Maida-lbs/dp/B004UKGE6Khttps://www.amazon.com/All-Purpose-Flour-Maida-lbs/dp/B004UKGE6K
- ¼ cup Ghee
- ¾ cup Whole Milk or as needed
Frying
- 1 cup Ghee
Instructions
Prepare Milk Mawa
- Warm 2 tbsp of ghee in a pan.
- Add ½ cup whole milk to the ghee.
- Bring the milk to boil.
- Add milk mawa powder to the boiling milk slowly while stirring constantly to prevent any lumps.
- Add pinch of saffron to it. Keep stirring and cooking the milk mawa powder on medium heat, stirring constantly until it turns into ricotta cheese like consistency.
- Once the milk mawa is ready, take it off the stove and keep it aside.
Prepare Chickpea flour mixture
- Heat 2 tbsp of ghee.
- Add coarse chickpea flour/ladu besan to the ghee.
- Keep cooking and stirring chickpea flour constantly in ghee until it becoems very light and fluffy, and also changes color to more redish/brownish yellow.
- Once the chickpea flour is cooked, turn the heat off and add prepared milk mawa to it.
- Mix it very well and let it cool completely.
Prepare Ghari Filling
- Put ½ cup of sugar in a food processor and process it for few second until you get dry grainy powdered sugar.
- Once the milk mawa and chickpea flour mix is completely cooled down, add dry grainy powdered sugar, ¼ cup coarsely chopped pistachio, ¼ cup coarsely chopped almonds and 1 tsp of cardamom powder to it and mix it very well.
- This is your ghari filling.
Prepare Dough for Ghari
- Add ¼ cup of melted ghee to 1 cup of all purpose flour.
- Mix it very well. The ghee should be sufficient enough to form a ball of dough after you mix the ghee to the flour. Look at the picture.
- Start adding little milk at a time to form a soft dough. The dough should be phulka roti like dough, nice and soft!
- Cover the dough for 5-15 minutes.
Prepare Ghari
- Find a tiny round bowl to pack the ghari filling with. Look at the picture. I use bowl little bigger than 1 tbsp spoon side but lot dipper.
- Pack the tiny bowl with the ghari filling till its ¾th way full.
- Use a spoon to press the filling down, making sure the filling is tightly packed in the tiny bowl.
- Tap the bowl hard upside down on a plate to take the packed filling out on a plate. Tap spoon on upside down bowl with filling in it to make sure the packed filling slides down on a plate. So now you have the ghari filling formed very well in a bowl sized fillings for the ghari.
- Divide the all purpose flour dough in equal size ball, similar to half size of the golf balls.
- Roll the dough balls out in a small 4" rounds Thick in the middle and thinner on the sides!
- Place the packed ghari filling we made earlier in the middle of the rolled rounds.
- Fold all sides in, one at time. Look at the pictures. Once folded, use your hand to tuck any sharp corners in.
- Prepare all the gharis by repeat the above steps. You can keep the prepared gharies under a towel till you are ready to deep fry them.
Deep Fry Ghari
- Heat 1 cup of ghee in a small deep frying pan. We are going to fry one ghari at a time so make sure the frying pan is small and deep enough. This will also help us not use too much ghee for frying.
- Once the ghee is hot, add one ghari at a time to the hot ghee and deep fry them by spreading hot ghee over ghari using spoon and turn them as it changes color to golden brown.
- Deep fry ghari on both sides couple of time on medium heat.
- Place them on a pepper towel once they are fried and golden brown.
- Keep repeating above step to deep fry all the prepared gharis.
Set the Gharis (These steps are completely optional)
- Once all the gharies are deep fried, let them cool down on room temperature for 1-2 hours.
- Once they are all cooled down, place tiny bit of extra ghee on top of each ghari. This is optional.
- Place all the gharis in the fridge for couple of hours to let it set.
- Enjoy cooled down gharis as dessert or with Surati bhusu as a snack!
