I love Dal-bafle. Whats that? Valid quesiton. Typically a lot of people in cosmo-westenised world have now heard about dal-bati which the marwaries have popularised. I thing the marwaries are more enterprising than the malwa-ries. Malwa-ries - are the natives of malwa - the place where I come from in MP.
Malwa is the land of cotton - black soil, warm temperature and warm people. Cotton trading started in Ujjain some 200 years back. Almost the same time when three GERMAN BROTHERS started trading cotton in mid western US and then moved to NY. More about them and the company they formed later. Anyways, so the idea is, that people of Malwa didnt get ahead much in trading.
However, the NOT-enterprising nature of malwa-ries is limited to cotton trading only. In terms of food, you cant even begin to compare Malwa people with anyone else in the world. We are ahead by miles. I have travelled around the country and some part of the world and I dont think any food cuisine comes even closer to the Malwa food richness and variety. (people from other regions, pls don’t take offense, take this as an emotional comment).
So, coming back to Dal bafle (pronounced as baaf-lay). How do you prepare it? Its a very long winding process. A mixture of 5 pulses is a good dal for this. Urad, Masoor, Toor, Moong and Chana dals. Mix them in equal quantity and prepare dal - the way you prepare with onion and garlic.
For bafle -
- Take mota aata (you should ideally not add any rawa if you dont have mota aata, the taste does not come out very well).
- Add salt + ghee (as mohun - binding agent)
- Then add water and knead it hard - make cakes (bafle) almost the size 4 cm by 4cm. Professional cooks make much bigger cakes. Almost 4-4-4 cm or 64-70 cu cm.
- Now boil water so that all the bafle can be put it in. Put haldi in the water. Once water starts boiling, add the bafle to the water and let them be in water till they start floating in water.
- Now, allow them to float for 2-3 mins, take them out and put them on a cotton cloth to dry. Rub and dry the bafle properly.
- While the bafle is still in water, get cowdung cakes (kande in Hindi) and ignite them. Once its ignited well, start putting the dried bafle on kande. Its important that the bafle are dry before being put on kande, otherwise it gets sticky
- Allow the bafle to bake properly, it will become all blackish because of ash from kande. Take the baked bafle and clean the ash completely.
- Break it in two or four pieces and put them in the pot of ghee so that the ghee starts soaking in.
- The Bafle are ready to be served once they are soaked in ghee.
For Churme ke laddo -
- Take mota aata, ghee, milk and water and knead it.
- While you are kneading it, make sure the cow-dung cakes (kande are ignited)
- Make the aata mixture from above and make round laddos out of it.
- Put them on kande and let it bake for some time.
- Keep turning to bake them from all sides. The laddo start cracking once baked.
- Once they are baked, take them out and clean the ash.
- Break the laddo into smaller pieces and finely ground them in a mixie till it becomes coarse powder.
- Now, add ghee and sugar and mix - make them in laddo.
- Churme ke laddo are ready to be served :-)
You cant eat dal bafle, laddo in buffet format. Sit down with a dona - pattal, thats plates made of dry leaves. Take bafle with dal, kadhi, aloo- gobhi ki subji with churme ke laddo, green chutney + pickle with a dash of lemon will add to the taste. Hmmm...
People have started adding dry fruits, mawa to dal bafle and also to ladoo. It depends it you want to do that. You can easily use oven to cook this at home instead of kande.
Note - Make sure not to drink any water post eating this for at least 2 hours otherwise the bafle (which are full of ghee) expand in stomach. Dont wear belt + wrinkle free cotton trousers - kurta- payajama is better :-). And NEVER and I mean NEVER have dal-bafle for dinner.
The current record for eating most dal bafle + laddo is two and half bafle and 12 laddo in one sitting in the year 1996. The record is in name of yours sincerely. Want to break it anyone...
Happy eating!!!
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