Obbattu

Recipe for Bele OBBATTU\HOLIGE:

For the filling (horana):
Tur Dal 1 cup
Jaggery 3/4 cup (can use upto 1 cup, but that will be too sweet for my palate!)
Cardamom 2

For the dough:
Maida/ All purpose flour 1 (may be 1.5 cups)
Salt pinch
Turmeric pinch
Oil 3 tbsp

Method:
Sift flour with turmeric. Stir in the salt and oil. Dump the flour on to a large plate. (something we call Harivana in Kannada.. it is nothing but a big plate with big slanting rim).Make a well in the center of the well. Pour water into the well and start combing the flour and the water, making a dough much softer than chapati dough. Cover with a damp cloth and rest it for at least 2 hours
For the filling. Combine the dal and about 3 cups of water and bring it to a boil. Simmer and cook till tender. Drain save the stock and use it in curries. (we make obbattina saaru, a delicacy in itself)
Combine the drained dal, crushed cardamom and jaggery in a thick bottomed pan. Cook the mixture till the jaggery has become molten and has combined well with the dal and the mixture is absolutely dry.Set it aside to cool.
When cool transfer it into a food processor and pulse till the mixture is smooth.
Pinch small balls of dough and roll the filling into small balls as well.
On a greased plastic sheet, roll out the dough balls into circles of 3" diameter using your fingers. Place the filling and pinch the dough to close the filling.
Using your fingers, roll the stuffed dough ball into a about 8-9" circles.
Ideally the filling should be uniformly distributed and the flour skin should be as thing as possible, so trying to achieve the ideal is a good idea. Mine is never perfect, but in my quest for the perfect, i end up making decent stuff..
Heat a griddle. When smoking, grease it with ghee. Place the rolled out obbattu on to the griddle. cook of both sides with oodles of ghee.
Serve hot with more ghee.
It is a tradition to eat holige with Seekarne or coconut milk or simple plain warm milk. I prefer mine with milk and ghee! Serve any which ever way you want, you will still get all the appreciation the dish deserves.

Note: The proportion of Jaggery is kind of dicey. Some are too sweet and some are less so. The rule of thumb is the darker the Jaggery, sweeter it is going to be. So 3/4 for a cup of dal should do good. If it is lighter in colour, chances are that the Jaggery is not as sweet and 1cup to 1.5 cups would be ideal. I like to begin with 3/4 of a cup of jaggery for every cup of dal, cook the mixture and taste it before taking it further. If it appears less sweet, it is just a matter of ten more minutes to add a little more Jaggery and go ahead with the process.