Ranga Aloor Pantua- রাঙ্গা আলুর পান্তুয়া and Happy Makar Sankranti

A new year 2017 and I am here, with my first blog post of the year. Hope you all had fantastic New Year celebrations.

We visited our home city Kolkata during these holiday break. And that requires a separate post I reserve for some other day.

I will share a dessert recipe to start off New Year blog post-‘ Ranga aloor pantua ‘- sweet potato dessert, is one such traditional Bengali sweet recipe. I have blogged about the recipe way back in past as well. Here- back in 2009 . This post is however a recipe which is re-visited and with couple of additions. 
This recipe is simple, as it doesn’t have coconut stuffing which makes it similar to ‘Ranga Aloor Pithe’. Since we are observing ‘Poush-Parbon’ these couple of days, I thought it would be appropriate to write about Ranga Aloor Pantua- pantua as like Gulab Jamuns in Hindi.

Sankranti celebration is a big affair in every Bengali home- some, even extending it to 3 –days celebrations. Each day is marked with various types of Puley/pithe being made. I have blogged many recipes for Sankranti …
This archived blog-post has all those traditional recipes which one can make during these period.

To the recipe

Ranga Aloor Pantua- Sweet Potato Gulab Jamun- রাঙ্গা  আলুর পান্তুয়া 

Recipe requirements

10-12 purple sweet potato

¼ cup of plain flour

2 pinch of baking soda

1 and ½ tsp of cinnamon powder

3 cups of granulated sugar

2 cups of water

½ tsp of cardamom powder

Cooking oil for deep fry 

Method

• Put a large saucepan with water and sugar on cooking.Add in cardamom powder. The water content should be reduced to half and the syrup will be slightly thick like to coat well the pantuas = gulab Jamuns.
• Now pressure cook sweet potatoes. Take out , peel off the skin and let it cool a bit , so that you can work it through but don’t let it go cold otherwise it will be hard to mash up well.It would be nice if the mixture is lump free and smooth.
• Now in a big mixing bowl, take the sweet potato pulp/mash, add in cinnamon powder.
• Now mix in plain flour and pinches of baking soda, add flour to above mashed sweet potatoes, mixing in very well. Make small balls out of the dough.Be gentle in shaping these balls.
• Put a heavy bottomed pan/kadai or deep frying pan to flames. Add in cooking oil, enough to deep fry these cute small balls.
• Deep fry them for about 5-7 mints at medium-low flames or till they turn into nice brown in colour. Do not hurry this process otherwise they won’t cook well.
• Transfer them all over kitchen towels, so that they absorb extra oil.
• Now dunk them in sugar syrup and let the sugar syrup simmer slowly at low flame for couple of more minutes. Switch off the flame and cover.

Let it rest for about an hour. Serve and enjoy these delicious pantuas.

Some more Sankranti recipes

Till and Badam ki Mithai

Choshir payesh-on-sankranti

Dudh- Puli pithe

Again wish you all a very Happy  Makar Sankranti, Lohri, Pongal and Bihu.

Happy Cooking