Sutarfeni

Hair-thin crispy sweet — refined flour cooked into a stiff dough with ghee and a little cornflour, then stretched and folded repeatedly (in a technique similar to hand-pulling noodles but for a candy-like dough) until hundreds of thread-thin strands are formed, fried in ghee until crisp, and the nests of golden threads filled with a mixture of dry-roasted nuts, cardamom, and sugar or drizzled with sugar syrup. The result is an impossibly delicate, shattering sweet that dissolves on the tongue; the threads are almost transparent when held to light. Surat's specialist sutarfeni makers are a small community; the hand-stretching technique requires years of practice. Eaten at Diwali and Eid — reflecting the Hindu-Muslim confectionery exchange in Surat's food culture.