- Servings:
- Preparation time: 15 minutes.
- Soaking time: 60-70 minutes.
- Boiling time: 10-15 minutes.
- Setting time: 5-6 hours.
- Making sugar syrup time: 3-4 minutes.
- Cooking time: 5-6 minutes.
- Total time: 40 minutes.
I have craving for royal treat of “Saffron Petha”, but can’t travel to Agara during summer; so prepared this authentic sweets from Agara and Mathura…will you?
Petha is famous sweets from Utter Pradesh, but available in every region of India; made from fresh vegetable Ash Gourd or Winter Melon. In some region it is called White Pumpkin.
Relish and prepare “Saffron Petha” with me; you will get most flavourful Petha. It is so good, you would like to gift near and dear during upcoming festival.
Ingredients:
- Ash gourd: 1kg
- Sugar: 600gm
- Saffron: 1pinch
- Alum powder (fitkari): half teaspoon
- Calcium hydroxide (kitchen lime or Kali chuna): 2 teaspoon
Preparation:
- Wash, peel and deseed the ash gourd.
- Cut into cylindrical shape about 2-3 inch length or as you wish.
- Prick these pieces all over with the help of fork.
Method:
- Soak these pieces in to lime water for 30-60 minutes.
- Drain the lime water and wash the pieces thoroughly under running water.
- Put the Petha in bowl pour alum water on the pieces and soak for 5 minutes.
- Drain the alum water.
- Take sufficient amount of water in a heavy bottom pot and boil the pieces till they become soft and transparent.
- Drain all water.
- Take big bowl.
- Spread one layer of sugar, then Petha pieces, sugar then Petha pieces and sugar.
- Keep it for 5-6 hrs.
- Next, take out all ash gourd pieces from the sugar.
- Put left out sugar solution from bowl to kadhai and heat it on low flame to make syrup of two thread consistency.
- Put drained Petha pieces in sugar syrup, increase the heating to high flame, and continue to heat till syrup become thick again.
- Add saffron thread in it. and boiled it.
- Put off the flame, and take out pieces on strainer.
- Let it be cool.
- Delicious saffron Petha is ready to serve.
saffron Petha (ash gourd) sweets by Nag Ratna Sahu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.