Jalebi's!!

Jalebi is a well-known Indian sweet. But it  is more famous with Punjabi people. You can find them anywhere. Sikhs often use them as sweets for weddings and many other special occasions.

As you see above is very good example of a jalebi. Its color will always be this bright orange no matter where you purchase them from; it is due to the saffron that they use in the ingredients and also a bit of coloring that helps the color to strengthen.  The ingredients of these wonderful sweets are as below.

1.     2 cups self raising flour

2.     1/2 tsp baking powder

3.     1 cup yogurt

4.     Vegetable/canola/sunflower cooking oil for deep frying (or sometimes they even use ghee)

5.     1 cup sugar

6.     Few strands of saffron

7.     1/4 tsp cardamom.

8.      2 drops orange food color

9.     2 tbsps rose water

The method for this delicious sweet is also not that hard. I will explain it  for all those who wish to learn.  Firstly  mix the flour, baking powder, and yogurt into a batter and keep aside for 24 hours to ferment. When that is done pour the batter into a ketchup dispensing bottle. To make the sugar syrup that is use to soak the jalebi in, you need to melt the sugar with the rose water and boil to get a one thread consistency. To check for this consistency, carefully dip the tip of your index finger into the syrup, touch your finger and thumb together and gently tease part. If one thread is formed then the syrup is done. Then immediately turn off the fire and straight away add the saffron strands and cardamom and stir well. Then get ready a reasonable size wok-like dish and began by heating oil in it. To test for the right temperature, drop a small amount of batter into the oil. It is also a believe told to me by my aunty that it is good to throw in a small amount of batter for anything that you intend to fry before frying the real thing, this will make your effort worth while. Then once you have done then, and it sizzles then you are all ready to go. Keep the flame on medium at all times to ensure all round cooking of the jalebis. To make the pattern of the jalebi, hold the keichup dispenser over the hot oil and squeeze the batter into the oil into a wiggly and random coiled circle . Do this repeatedly for a few times. Fry your jalebi until it is light golden in color and then remove and put directly into the sugar syrup that you have done earlier.  Allow your jalebi to soak for 2-3 miniutes and then remove.

But I would not guaranty  a fantastic result the first time round. Because even now, not all shops that sells jalebi are nicely. The one that I always go to is at Kuala Lumpur. For me personally the jalebi is not that bad. But the best jalebi I have had is at India. I visited Indian in the year 2009. I went to Delhi. The amount of sweet shops there will make all sweet tooth’s go insane. So happened when I entered this particular shop that they were making hot, fresh jalebis, and it tasted out of this world. So to those of you would have the same experience as I did, go to India, find all this places and you will find yourself in heaven.

Yunisha Lahre
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