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 rasgullas 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.
From Bengal with love
Gokul Saha, the owner of Sweet Treat, a shop selling Bengali sweets since 2014 in CR Park, Market 2, says they only rely on the jaggery producers of West Bengal to make their winter sweets. “The regular jaggery, popular in New Delhi, comes from Jhansi. We do not use that. The jaggery we use to prepare our winter specialities comes from Nadia. We have a set of farmers, mostly from Nadia district’s Nabadwip and Bagula, from whom we import the jaggery,” he says.
Saha is a busy man these days. The line outside his shop is longer as sweet lovers have started making a beeline for his special items. While the extremely soft and spongy date palm jaggery rasogolla is the crowd-puller, various kinds of sandesh are also being lapped up. “Our signature item during winter is the bhapa sandesh made with notun gur. or fresh date palm jaggery.
This is the replica of the famous Kolkata sweet Chittaranjan. We also do baked rasogollas made with date palm jaggery, dudh puli, and notun gurer rasmalai. Although these items are only for winter, we try to have some date palm jaggery sweets throughout the year. For instance, the nolen gur sandesh is in demand throughout the year,” he adds.
There is, however, a new challenger in town now. Across the road stands Sandesh, a sweet shop with a 150-year-old legacy of Surendranath Dey and Sons, a north Kolkata-headquartered giant in Kolkata’s sweets market. To replicate the original flavours, owner Sucharita Modak, the granddaughter of the late Surendranath Dey, established the CR Park outlet just four months ago.
From Day One, the shop has been attracting customers drawn to it by its famous name. TMS enters the shop and checks out its specialities. The lineup, especially their ‘specials’ – the white bhaapa mishti doi (steamed sweet yoghurt), kesar dilkhush (a type of sandesh), chocolate sandesh, and chocolate barfi – have already become a hit since the October 2024 Durga Puja.
“Anticipating the winter season, our customers requested us to prepare sweets with date palm jaggery, hence, we have come up with items such as notun gurer rasogolla, kancha golla, gurer bati, gurer kolos, gurer talshash, and various other kinds of sandesh,” says Modak.
Like Sweet Treat, Sandesh, too, does not use the locally-sourced date palm jaggery popular in the Delhi market. “In our sweets, we do not use any preservatives. We import our notun gur (fresh date palm jaggery) from Kolkata, and that is just for the winter. We shall not use date palm jaggery for the coming months as it stops tasting good once winters are over and it goes old,” she says.
Sandesh also relies on the craftsmanship of the Modak community, an artisanal community that has traditionally been in the Bengali confectionery business for centuries. Both Sucharita and her husband Arindam belong to this community and their collective effort has enhanced the taste of the sweets sold at the outlet.
The craze for nolen gur-based sweets is not limited to Bengali customers only. As an emplyee of Kamala Sweets, one of the oldest Bengali sweet shops based in CR Park Market 1, said “non-Bengali customers love tasting our specialities like notun gurer rasogolla, notun gurer dudhpuli, notun gurer baked rasogolla, and notun gurer kanchagollas.”
Old loves
As Poush or Makar Sankranti (January 14) nears, CR Park lays out its stalls for the selling and buying of puli pitha (sweetened rice dumplings) and patishapta (crepes with various kinds of stuffing – either a mix of coconut and date palm jaggery, or a mix of khoya and jaggery, or a combination of both), and Annapurna-faithfuls make a beeline for the shop. Annapurna is one of the oldest sweet shops in the neighbourhood.
It has been in business for more than four decades and was one of the first ones in CR Park to introduce patishapta. “Patishapta has been there in our shop from the start. The idea was to provide the same taste we grew up with to the people living here. Over the years, we have added many new date palm jaggery-based sweets such as kheersagar, dudh puli, and gur bati. All these sweets are sold during the three months of winter,” says Suman Kar, who currently runs the shop.
The popularity of date palm jaggery-based sweets in CR Park is such that many shops that otherwise mostly specialise in Bengali savouries and snacks sell sweets, prepare and sell date palm jaggery-based sweets for these three months. Dadu’s Cutlet at Market 2 is one of them. The shop, which is famous for its cutlets and piyaji (onion fritters), sells sweets such as gokul pitha, ros bora, and patishapta during the winters; the only sweet Dadu sells almost all around the year is malpua. Shyam Charan Mistri, who runs the shop says: “This is the time when all sweet shops come up with innovations and we also do the same to attract customers.”
In Delhi, the popularity of date palm jaggery is not confined to CR Park, though. Velox Restaurant and Cafe in Daryaganj sells nolen gur ice cream throughout the year, says Sapra. Chandni Chowk’s Annapurna, one of the oldest Bengali sweet shops in Delhi, also sells sweets made from date palm jaggery.