Sandesh

Trick or Treat with Sandesh

What will be your take , read on to know mine for this festival being celebrated in this part of world, the most attractive part being the children , seeing lovely smiling faces dressed in some colourful ways or may be scary sometimes , families coming together and celebrating things called joys of life ......

I wonder how humans have developed a keen interest in celebrating , celebrating the joys of life , celebrating colours and Light , I have found that both Halloween and our own Deepavali , are festival revolving around lights and the joys of children ,we Bengali’s celebrate Deepavali as Kali Puja …the legend says that to defeat the Demons Shumbha/Nisumbha, Maa kali came to rescue the world ,more story here
Kali-pooja-in-Bengaland another legend of Rama-return-to-ayodhya
and these are some of the interesting poems on Diwali ,I kept reading the first one and laughing a lot …Diwali-poems
It will be Halloween on Tuesday 31 October , and children will be coming with trick or treat Tradition, what attracts me more is them being dressed as fairies, monster , and batman to anything scary , scary but enjoyable scary haha …….

The legend says Halloween is being celebrated to mark the harvest festival and also its originated in Ireland ,Britain and northern Europe…more legend stories here
halloween history
So get ready for the Jack-o-Lantern, theme parties and getting together …
So guess , making homemade Sandesh will be fun also …this is a recipe I learned from my MIL and I am still in the learning process , she used to make it every morning to give as sweet Treat in her son’s lunch box .Sometimes making the Chana ( Cottage cheese) in the night for a quicky

in the morning ….so it was treat everyday .Being Bengali sandesh is such a favourable thing I can’t think anything else…
Without much adding to intro here is a simple recipe for Sandesh


Ingredients
3-4 cups of milk
sugar as per taste ,I added 4-5 tbs of sugar
2 tbs of mango syrup, for the colour and some light mango fragerance
1 lemon

Method
Bring the pot with milk to a boil, meanwhile cut the lemon in halves , add the fresh juice from it to the milk (I will suggest not to use the lemon juice in plastic lemon available in vegeatble section , fresh lemon juice has been more effective than anything else, )
Let it curdle up , make Chana out of the milk, squeeze the excess liquid from Chana, set aside in a bowl.
Add sugar , mango syrup, and now the fun part ,with your hands ,blend the Chana and the sugar well , knead it properly ,so that chana becomes smooth, and sugar evenly distributed
Now heat a saucepan , and add the above chana mixture to it ,cook it at low stiring continously and sometimes putting the flame to medium ,when you feel its becoming bit low on temperature, the trick is to maintain a temperature in which the mixture don’t get burnt and you come out making sandesh with flying colours…My Mil says it like “ Chana ke Paak deva”
Take the mixture out when you feel that the mixture has little bit dried and easily being released from the pan while stiring, the constitency will be little bit dried but not grainy , take it out and immediately roll into small balls and shape them in whatever way you feel look beautiful …cool, serve and enjoy with your loved ones ..
I have found that while shaping the sandesh since the paak mixture is hot , if you slightly flour your hands then the sandesh is perfectly rolled into desirable shape and also it doesn’t hurt your hands.
I have used mango syrup for a flavour for mango sandesh , but rosewater, or saffron can be used to give different flavours to sandesh….

So wish everybody a Happy and scary Halloween …
This is also my entry to the to the VCC:VCCq3-2006 being hosted by Vkn of MyDhaba

Taking my days as it comes and enjoying the Fall here , hope everybody enjoying nature also.

Happy Halloween

I will be back with some more recipes next time ,till then Bon Appetite , Happy cooking .