One of the prominent North Indian sweets that is mostly available during the monsoons and is a confectionary marvel is the ghewar. It is a disc shaped, sugar syrup rich, honeycomb like sweet that has an enticing texture and luscious taste. The states where it is most popular and best available includes Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.
So in today's episode we have embarked on a ghewar Trail with our host Paras Nassa, across the city of Sonipat in Haryana that transforms into a ghewar hub every monsoon season. It is the key sweet that is relished during the Indian festival of Teej and Raksha Bandhan. In the present time confectioners have come up with all kinds of variations like ghewar with malai or rabri (thickened milk) or khoya (solidified milk). They garnish these with slivers of pistas or almonds, and strands of saffron for colour and flavour.
The first destination of this trail was Lala Triloki Sweets in Ganj Bazar. The visit to the workshop was a marvellous experience as the expertise of the halwai in making the lattice like sweet left us stunned. In this 100 plus years old shop we tried mava, plain and doodh ghewar. The richness of the malai and the exquisite texture of the ghewar created magic.
The second destination was Sunder Mishthan Bhandar in the same locality. Here we tried kesar and mava ghewar. The saffron one was slightly sweeter in comparison to the mava one but overall the latter stole the show. Here we also tried some samosa, dhokla and feni.
While heading to the final destination of this trail, we stopped by a random shop selling humongous ghewar that weighed around 1.5 to 2 kgs.
Finally we reached our last stop, RK Sweets and Namkeen. It's huge factory with numerous workers was a testimony to its popularity. First we visited the ghewar production section at their factory. The huge set up full of these honeycomb sweets and the coordination between the workers was an amazing sight to behold. Here we picked up some mawa ghewar and it was superb. It was soft and crunchy, creamy and optimally sweet.
So if you are a ghewar lover then do check out the video