Delhi's Winter Date With Bengal

As the winter chill sets in, the craze for date palm jaggery-based sweets is rising in and outside Delhi's mini Kolkata, and there's a new challenger in town. TMS samples through the sweet-mile to see how the old shops are holding up.

- AKASH CHATTERJEE

FOR fish-loving Delhiites, Chittaranjan Park or CR Park is heaven. As one of India's largest Bengali neighbourhoods (outside West Bengal), the place offers a range of fish to suit every taste. The overwhelming popularity of the fish markets is not limited to Bengalis; people from all corners of the city flock to the two main markets of this neighbourhood in search of quality prawns or hilsa. However, during the brief Delhi winters, CR Park has a new set of attractions-sandesh and rasogollas made with nolen, paataali or notun gur (varied names of fresh date palm jaggery or khejur); sweet shops rise to the occasion and come up with innovations or bring in their tried-and-tested date palm jaggery-based sweets to satisfy their customers.

The demand for date palm jaggery as such is also high this season, food explorer Anubhav Sapra, the founder of Delhi Food Walks, confirms. "Jaggery-based products are popular all over the country. In north India, we make rewari, gajak, til patti, mungfali patti, and chikki using sugarcane jaggery all year. However, nolen gur is only available in winter. Many shops in and outside CR Park run by Bengalis make full use of it by producing sweets such as gurer rasogollas and jolbhara sandesh. Since date palm jaggery, especially fresh date palm jaggery, is not available in Delhi, shopkeepers source it from West Bengal, and most of their notun gur sweets are available only during the three months of winter, December to February," he says. However, for some time now, sweets made of old, as opposed to fresh or new (notun), date palm jaggery have been available at Bengali sweet shops of Delhi, including those at CR Park, year-round.