Bhapa Puli with a modern twist

This is a traditional Bengali sweet of steamed rice dumplings. It is generally made of rice flour and stuffed with coconut-date palm jaggery stuffing. But here I gave a slight twist by mixing rice flour with semolina and stuffing it with some carrot halwa.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 1 cup semolina
• pinch salt
• 1/2 cup carrot halwa
• 1 litre milk reduced to half.
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp cardamom powder
• 1 tbsp chopped pistachios
• 2 tbsp raisins
• pinch saffron

Method:

1. In a bowl, mix together rice flour, semolina, cardamom powder and a pinch of salt. Knead into a dough by adding required quantity of water. Cover with a damp cloth and keep aside for an hour. Divide the dough into 10-11 equal portions.
2. For carrot halwa grate the carrots either with a hand-held grater or in a food processor. You will need about 4 to 4.5 cups grated carrots. In a heavy kadai, add all of the grated carrots. Pour 4 cups full-fat milk. Mix the grated carrots and milk together.
3. Cook this mixture on a low to medium flame. After some minutes, the milk will begin to froth first and then start reducing slowly and slowly. Cook the carrot and milk mixture till milk is reduced by 75%. Then add ghee and sugar. Add 5 to 6 green cardamom, powdered finely in a mortar-pestle or about ⅓ to 1 teaspoon cardamom powder and pistachios. Simmer till the whole halwa mixture becomes dry.
4. Take one portion of the dough and flatten it into a round circle with your fingers. Put 1-2 tsp Of the stuffing in the centre. Close it into a crescent shape. Seal the edges with your fingers or with a fork.
5. Line a colander with a wet cloth and place the dumplings in it. Cover with the cloth. Steam for 4-5 minutes in a saucepan, steamer or pressure cooker. Garnish with some crushed saffron & powdered brown sugar or castor sugar.