Makar Sankranti is a special Indian festival which is celebrated almost every part of the country. It is special because whereas most other festivals are observed based on lunar cycles but this Makar Sankranti is observed based on the solar cycle. Daytime will get longer day by day from the day of Makar Sankranti and night will get shorter. People celebrate this festival by participating in kite festival, colourful fair, harvesting winter crop, singing & dancing etc. But any festival is incomplete without food. So people prepare various mouthwatering dishes on this occasion. Some people always prepare a special Makar Sankranti dinner every year.
Jaggery is the most preferred ingredient of food for this festival. There are a lot of sweet dishes prepared with this jaggery. Sesame seed made laddu, peanut chikki, pongol, puran poli, halwa, pithe all these are traditional Makar Sankranti special dishes from various parts of the country.
But what all do you prefer to have for dinner?
This year I have tried sajer pithe (aka sarar pithe) along with nolen gur (a special aromatic liquid jaggery).
This year my Makar Sankranti dinner menu included sara pitha, nolen gur & gajar ka halwa.
Is it not perfect?
Sara pitha is a popular food for Poush Sankranti in West Bengal. Jaggery (gur) made sweet dish is an inseparable food item for Makar Sankranti. Here a special aromatic jaggery is very popular in West Bengal. That type of jaggery is called as nolen gur in West Bengal. It is used to make various mouthwatering sweet dishes.
Various kind of pitha are prepared with this nolen gur what make those sweet dishes more enjoyable. Sara pitha is a unique kind of pitha which is popular in West Bengal as well as Bangladesh too. I always enjoy this sara pitha with nolen gur.
Actually those sara pitha are prepared with rice flour, so definitely those can be included as a substitute of rice or roti.
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But being an Indian, we simply can not think about the celebration of a festival without a sweet dish. As I have already included a Bengali dish in the menu so I added North Indian sweet dish gajar ka halwa because I wanted diversity in the menu.
Gajar ka halwa (Indian carrot pudding) is the most popular sweet dish in Northern Indian states. Here in West Bengal, you will hardly find this sweet in any sweet shop. So I had to prepare this delicious but a simple sweet dish at home.
So this was my special Makar Sankranti dinner of this year. How was it? Is it not mouthwatering?
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