JOIN USButter always adds a creamy delight to your favourite food items. Add to that, samosas - the most desired but sinful snack, while fruits seem healthy but often tasteless when compared to such mouth-watering delicacies.
But what if your preferred snack and fruits now come frozen, coated with pure home-made butter, packed with rich mawa (khoya) and dry fruits filling and sprinkled with powdered sugar?
Makkhan ke samose is probably Old Delhi’s only unexplored sweet, made exclusively by Prabhudayal Sharma. Taking forward his father’s legacy since 1970, Prabhudayal has a humble setup in Chandni Chowk’s Khari Baoli. But the magic his experienced and fast-moving fingers create over a slab of ice has spread to the Capital and around.
Those who have tasted the butter samosas and fruits find it difficult to resist, coming back to Old Delhi lanes time and again. The annual Ramlilas seem incomplete without his modestly setup stall over a small table, selling the royal treat for just Rs 20-30 per piece, in an otherwise unimaginably expensive food arrangement around.
The home-made butter is churned out from fresh cream, forming the core layers of the samosas and mini replicas of watermelons, pomegranates and oranges. The prized mawa filling boasts of rich dry-fruits like almonds, pistachios, cardamom and saffron along with a mild sweetener karara (powdered sugar). “We only use pure ingredients. This authenticity gives our items their unique taste. We never compromise on quality, even during inflationary times, as our dedicated customers can identify the difference,” Prabhudayal proudly states.
Shaping the frozen butter into a samosa over an ice slab, filling it with the mixture, sealing the open ends and then quickly immersing in ice-cold water to prevent it from melting in hands – the skill is not easy to master. Food colours are added to the white butter to give fruit lookalikes their original colours – green for watermelon, with a red filling inside, pink for pomegranate with anardanas mixed in the filling and so on.
But the priceless expertise may well just be preserved only till Prabhudayal is involved.
He says, “My son is not interested in this work because of the low returns it offers. In any case, I have educated him to do a job and have a successful career ahead. I am carrying on this work only till the time my health and stamina permits. I no longer take big orders for marriages and parties due to lack of helping hands and difficulties of transportation. Moreover, the helpers lack proficiency.”
While summers pose huge problems in preserving the butter items due to excessive heat, the winter months have their own shortcomings, literally freezing Prabhudayal’s hands while working over the ice slab.
But in the end, the effort seems worth it when these silky smooth treats melt on your tongue, gratifying your desire to experience pure Utopian bliss.