Sounds deliciously wrong. This week I had a craving for a childhood favorite, I could not even remember what it was called. With the help of my tribe, yes, I have tribe – it consists of ladies that I’ve known since the dawn of my time – i.e.- I met them when I went to primary school 😊, they figured out from my description what I was looking for. One of my tribe owns the holy grail of Indian cooking book, she pulled out the recipe and sent it to me.
I adjusted the recipe somewhat as I do not like the smell of ghee – which it calls for and I used desiccated coconut, because I live in the UK and my local doesn’t always have such exotic ingredients.
The dessert I craved was Coconut poli. My mum used to make it at Christmas and special occasions only. I remember sneaking them and hiding in the cupboards and eating them as soon as they were made. I can hear the shock; I could fit into the kitchen cupboard and I could eat to my heart’s content once upon a time and never see it stick to me. To be fair I was a child and it is a blessing most kids have – the metabolism of a hummingbird – I looked it up, apparently hummingbirds have the fastest metabolism of all known living creatures.
Now back to my dessert of my childhood.
For the pastry:
Use 3 cups plain flour, 2 tablespoons ghee (or butter), ½ teaspoon salt.
Mix all the ingredients together and make a dough using warm water. The dough should be soft but not sticky. Make sure you dough it until your arms hurt, that way you know you deserve the very tasty dessert – you literally worked for it!
For the Filling:
2 cups of coconut (or a whole fresh coconut grated).
3 tbsp of sugar
1 tbsp poppy seeds
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp ground cardamom (only seeds)
¼ tsp nutmeg
Toast the sesame seeds, remove from heat, add the poppy seeds, and bash a little to make a rough paste. Roast the coconut slightly, add the sugar, the sesame and poppy mix, cardamom, and nutmeg. Mix and taste, add more sugar if you prefer it to be very sweet.
**if you use desiccated coconut add a tsp of coconut cream to the mix - it adds to the taste and texture.
Roll out small round discs from your pastry, 1 ½ mm thick and 8 ½ cm diagonally. Add 1 tbsp of the filling and fold over like a pie. Pinch the edges closed ensuring there are no gaps.
Fry in deep oil (I used rape seed oil). Remove from the oil when they are golden brown, drain excess oil on a wire rack or paper towels.
Enjoy while warm or cold with a nice cup of tea.
This recipe brought back some of my happiest of childhood memories and now I get to make new ones. They are certainly pastries of love.
