Pather Pheni ( Indian sweet pastry dish) ~ICC January 2012

Royal dessert , crispy, flakey sweet pastry that melts in every mouthful.

This post is for the Indian cooking challenge, event by Srivalli recipe by Harini

Ingredients

8oz fine semolina 

2 teaspoons ghee

A pinch of salt

Water to knead the dough

Sunflower oil for frying

For paste:

2 teaspoons ghee

2 teaspoons rice flour

Sugar Syrup:

8oz sugar

1/2 cup water

Decoration:

Coarsely chopped pistachios nuts

Blanched almonds coloured red.

Method:

Sugar Syrup

1. Add the water  and sugar in a heavy bottom vessel and bring to boil, cook the syrup till it reaches 1 thread consistency. Once it reaches that immediately take off heat and keep aside to cool.

For the Pheni:

1.In a mixing bowl, add the fine semolina, 2 tsp of ghee (in solid form) and work it up to result in crumb like texture.

2.Add a pinch of salt and knead into a soft dough adding water gradually. (The dough needs to be softer than the regular chapati/puri dough. )

3.Cover with a muslin cloth and set aside for a minimum of 1 hour. (The more the resting time the better the quality of the phenis.)

4.In a smaller bowl, whisk the solid ghee and rice flour until they form a smooth paste.

5.Divide the dough into 5 parts  and roll out thin puris out of each of those and cover them to stop drying up.

6.On each rolled out puri, apply the rice flour-ghee paste and layer them one on top ofeach  other.
7. Once you have layered the last puri spread some more flour-ghee paste  and roll the layered puris into a tight log like a swiss roll.
8.Cut the log into 1 inch pieces and roll out each piece with light hands  into a thin puri and keep them covered until ready to be fried.

9.Heat the oil in a pan and allow to heat to medium hot.
10.Fry each of the puris, they should be fryed on medium heat and should crisp up but not change colour they should remain white.
11.Drain them onto paper towel until cool.

12. To decorate the pheni , dip a pastry brush in the cooled sugay syrup and brush the pheni  on both sides with the sweet syrup.(Pheni and sugar syrup both must be cool when  decorating , if decorated whilst either is hot will result in soggy pheni)

13. Sprinkle some pistachio and almond decoration on the pheni and place  on some parchment paper to dry.

14. Store in an  air tight container to keep crisp.

NB- It is not necessary to coat these pheni is sugar syrup, they can just be dusted in icing sugar and served with badam milk instead.

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