The rice-harvest festival in Bengal, poush sankranti, is celebrated by making the most wondrous of sweets—the pithe. This is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of items prepared using rice, date-palm syrup (patali gur, only available in winter), coconut, milk, and flour. Pithe is no single dish, but a category of sweets that are part of the Bengali cooking tradition dedicated exclusively to turning the season’s harvest into delectable foods.
Patishapta is a type of pithe. It is a light crêpe filled with either kheer or a coconut-and-gur mixture. In this recipe, we show you how to make the version with kheer.