Puran Poli — Sweet Lentil-Stuffed Flatbread (पुरण पोळी)

Maharashtra; made at Holi, Ganesh Chaturthi, and other festivals; each region of Maharashtra has a slightly different puran filling ratio and dough technique

Puran poli (पुरण पोळी) is Maharashtra's most important festival flatbread: a soft wheat dough enclosing a smooth, fudge-like stuffing of cooked chana dal (split Bengal gram) mashed with jaggery, cardamom, and nutmeg — the filling called puran (पुरण). The technique requires cooking the dal until completely soft, draining and mashing with the jaggery until the mixture coheres and pulls away from the pan sides cleanly, cooling to a manageable consistency, then enclosing in a rested wheat dough and rolling carefully to a thin, even circle without the filling breaking through. Cooked in ghee on a tawa until golden.

• Gujarati puran puri is essentially identical; Kerala elai ada (rice flour with jaggery-coconut) uses the same sweet-stuffed-flatbread principle; Hungarian rétes (strudel) uses a similar thin-stretch-dough-around-filling technique

Eaten as a festival sweet alongside katachi amti and toop (ghee). The combination of the sweet, cardamom-scented puran filling and the slightly savoury amti is a characteristic Maharashtrian festival balance of sweet and salt.