Jan 22

Greek Pastellis

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This Sankranti, I knew I wanted to make something for the festival. Asked around in my family and the response everywhere is that we don’t make anything regional specific for Sankranti. Hmmm, change of plan.

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Plan B – decided to focus on Til as that’s the star ingredient during this festival. Looked up – til ladu (scratch that), til chakki (scratch that) revdi (scratch that). Kuch alag banana hai. Started the sesame search and bingo found a recipe that is so Indian in disguise.

Greek pastellis- goodness of Til and Honey with generous sprinkling of pistas, badams and dried rose petals. Not as crunchy as a Chikki, more chewy but still as yum. Happy Sankranti everyone.

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Ingredients:

2 ½ cups of sesame seeds
1 ½ cups of honey
½ cup mix of almond and pistachio slivers and dried rose petals
Rose water

  1. Add the honey to a saucepan and heat over a medium low heat until it starts to bubble.
  2. Add sesame seeds to the pan and mix well to incorporate with the honey. Cook slowly while continually stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon until it achieves a rich golden-brown colour, about 10 minutes or so.
  3. When couple of minutes are left, add the nuts and petal mix and mix it well.
  4. Prepare a silipat or silicon baking sheet by sprinkling it with some rose water and spreading it to cover the working surface.
  5. Pour the hot mixture onto the working surface and spread it with a spatula to a uniform thickness of a ½ inch or so.
  6. Take a sufficiently large piece of parchment paper and cover the outspread pasteli mixture with it, then, use a rolling pin over top of the parchment paper to further thin and spread the mix into a rough rectangle of uniform thickness, about a ¼ inch or so.
  7. Remove the parchment paper, square the edges of the pasteli with a spatula or icing tool and let stand to cool.
  8. Equally divide and cut the outspread pasteli into your preferred shapes
  9. Use a metal spatula to remove the pasteli pieces from the working surface and place the pieces in an airtight container (lined with parchment paper) for storage.
Recipe – Greekgourmand