Makar Sankranti Specials

Recently I read the blog of Jaya which is a very good cuisine made up of poetry and other food ingredients. I felt responsibility to extend the food blog chain a bit.There comes the opportunity of enjoying Lai’s on the eve of Makar Sankranti which falls on 14th January in North Indian communities. Everyhing is good here except the situation, when someone is guest and served with Big lai on this eve.
That day if one goes to any home home here, there the guest is served with at least two Lai’s in a plate along with other items. Mostly a combination of Moodhee or Chura’s lai with a Til's . It’s easy to eat the til’s lai .But the situation becomes awkward when one is bound to eat the Moodhee or Chura lai sitting in front of many people .There are exclusive two ways to eat them. Either you break it in pieces with your hands or try to bite the part of whole stuff wide opening your mouth  . If one takes first option to break, the lai will break making a cracking sound and to spread some of it’s parts down the plate. For many it becomes difficult to eat the big Lai while talking. And if one takes the second option one can feel some parts of the lai sticking near to mouth. There is no solution available to this problem. No one either serves broken lai or no one likes to get broken lai  . In the next generation I will suggest to prepare miniature lai. If some like to feel the festival more, better go to some village on this eve and have Lai made of roasted rice. It’s so hard to crack that, it’s a real test of Dabur’s Lal Duntmunjan’s effectiveness. While at home one can take lai with the milk which makes it more tasty. Anyway I like lai very much, it becomes a daily ready made breakfast for at least 10 days even after Maker Sankranti. Our Navodaya days are the proof of it when many of the students will get a poly bag full of Lai from their home.
Pirikiya, the all time favorite, is a fast food in a sense of readymade food and it’s preparation is lengthy one. The preparation of inside mixture of Suji, Sugar ,Coconut , Spices , Ghee needs experienced hands and rolling it into a nicely designed maida bread packs is an artistic work. I don’t know to prepare it. Occasionally to please my Mom I can make nice Laddoos of Coconut ( We call this laddoos as “Narkeler Naru”).

There are some excellent cuisines in Bengali community adding to the existing ones and one of them is Pithe / Patisepte. It’s nicely rolled bread (Like bread but not bread) with sweet coconut preparation kept inside. Then it is fried in ghee for a while. It’s soaked in concentrated milk. Allow it to cool. Once cooled completely it becomes ready to serve ......... . :-)