Recipe: Garma Garam Jalebi

If you have taken the day off and are enjoying time with your kids, who have got a chhuti from school, delight your tastebuds with something sweet and homemade today.

Maharaj Bhawar Singh's crispy, deep-fried Jalebi dunked in a sugar syrup will be elevated to something heavenly with fafda or rabri.

Have it as a dessert post lunch or as nashta with a cup of chai -- it's sure to make your family's day extra special.

Jalebi

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients

1 cup maida or all-purpose flour
2 tbsp besan or gram flour or chickpea flour
¾ cup dahi or thick yoghurt
2 tbsp ghee
½ tbsp kesar or saffron syrup
Water
Ghee, for deep frying

For the sugar syrup

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp lemon juice
Few strands kesar or saffron
Few drops rose essence, optional
Pinch green elaichi or cardamom powder

For serving

Rabdi or fafda

Method

Mix the maida and the besan in a bowl.
Add the yoghurt.
Whisk to get a lump-free batter.
Add a little water only if needed, but the batter should not be too runny.
The consistency of the batter should be thick.
Keep aside in a warm place for 12 hours or overnight to ferment.
The next day, mix the batter with a ladle and add the ghee and the saffron syrup.
It should be a sticky thick batter of dropping consistency.
Separately, in a saucepan, boil the sugar with the water, lemon juice and the kesar, until you achieve a one-string consistency (please see the note below).
Boil it for about 15 minutes over medium-high heat.
Add the cardamom and/or rose essence and keep stirring on the lowest heat.
At the same time, in a flat-bottomed frying pan or kadhai, heat the ghee for deep frying over medium-high heat.
Take a piece of cloth with a small hole in the middle or a durable ziplock bag with hole in the middle.
Fill it with the maida-besan-yoghurt batter and draw circles in the hot ghee.
Make sure the ghee does not start smoking.
It should be just hot enough to fry the jalebi, so adjust the heat accordingly.
Make 3-4 circles for each jalebi and fry in batches until crisp and golden.
Drain and immediately add it to the hot sugar syrup.
Let it stay dunked in the syrup for 2 minutes, then drain and serve hot with rabri or fafda.

Editor's Note: One-thread consistency sugar syrup: It is important to keep testing for consistency while the sugar syrup is boiling.

The test for this is: Dip a spatula, preferably wooden, into the boiling sugar syrup and take out.

Some syrup would have coated the spatula. Let it cool.

Touch the cooled syrup with your forefinger. Some syrup will come onto your finger.

Touch that with your thumb and separate thumb from forefinger.

When one little continuous delicate thread is formed by the syrup, when the coated forefinger is pulled away from your thumb, you have a one-string or one-thread consistency sugar syrup.