Thattai

This is  a fried snack my mom prefers to do for festivals, to pack for my brothers and for me when we leave to our hostels (during college days) and when we go on a long journey in holidays. Also great for an evening snacks. This is my modified version of the recipe whereas my mom soaks and  grinds rice freshly in a wet grinder and add dall powder to it.

Ingredients:

Rice flour- 4 cups

Fried gram dall flour/ chutney dall flour – 1 cup

Gram dall- 1 cup

Butter- 2 tbsp (or)  Heated and cooled canola oil-  2 tbsp

Dry chillies- 8 no

Garlic – 10 pods

Asfoetida- 1/4 tsp

Cumin seeds- 1 tsp (optional)

Sesame seeds-  1tsp (optional)

Salt – 2 tsp

Oil – sufficient to deep fry

Method:

Soak the gram dall in water for 1/2 hour. 

Grind the dry chillies first in a blender. Add peeled garlic pods next and fried gram dall atlast. Measure this flour and  for 1 cup of this flour add 4 cups of rice flour. Take them in a large bowl, add salt, asfoetida, cumin seeds, sesame seeds and drained chana/gram dall. Mix the dry  ingredients with the butter without any crumbles, and add water slowly . Mix till you can make a ball out of it. The dough will be like chapathi dough except for the elasticity.

Heat the oil in a wide bottom kadai so you get the maximum surface area to do large batches of frying. Also ensure you heat good amount of oil .Whne you take smaller quantity, the oil  gets heated up  easily and regulating the temperature will be  a tedious  job by itself.

Back home, my mom gets help from her house maids when one fries and others do the  pressing. They  spread a  Dhoti (veshti) on the floor and take a small ball of the dough and press it on the dhoti by greased hands to get a  thin round disc. When a batch is ready , it is fried in oil, on the both sides, till it turns golden yellow color. They are then drained and cooled before packing in air tight containers.

Here in USA, I am  a single woman army, so, I go for smaller batches of frying.  I have no enough floor space in the kitchen and moreover my kids have no patience in seeing me work on the floor. So, I cut the edges of a few  ziploc bags and pressed the dough in between the sheets.  Since you do it like a sandwich, the thattais do not dry that fast  and you need no oil for your hands.

Don’t miss my fellow bloggers’  version of thattai:

Food in the main

Vegetarian concoctions

Just for fun

Letz cook

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Sangeetham and samayal -meme game and Murukku recipe

Have patience, have patience

Don’t be in such a hurry

If you get impatient

You only start to worry

Remember, remember

God is patient to you

Think of all the times

When others have to wait for you

… 

Hello, just a second , don’t get confused whether you have landed in a wrong blog. It is me relaxing on my sofa,  remembering the good old song of my school days. This is  the song I  sing to myself whenever I am waiting especially at the crowded bus stops in Chennai.

Just like this song, I have special songs for  every occasions. My mom hums sweet telugu tunes while she cooks. Those are great tunes  which none would have ever heard except her stove and vessels.

Hey that gives me an idea!! Why don’t we play a meme game with this ? At the latest , ‘partha mudhal naalai’  from ‘Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu’ is the hit in our kitchen kacheri. Now you tell me the most frequent song/tune/ slogam you  hum/recite while you cook. I tag  my favourite bloggers Indira ,  Menutoday , Vee , My Dhaba, and Saffron Hut.

Coming back to food, I  wanted to enter My dhaba’s VCC Q3  2006. But all the snacks and sweets are all coming to a grand closure.Yet, I managed to grab the last few murukkus for a photo session. Here  is the recipe for arisi murukku

     

                 Arisi murukku- a deep fried snack made with rice flour  

Ingredients:

Rice flour – 2 cups

Fried gram dall / udaitha kadalai/- 1/2 cup

Red chilli- 4 Nos

Asfoestida- 3 pinches

Curry leaves- 7/8

Sesame seeds- 1 tbsp

Cumin seeds- 1/2 tbsp

Butter /heated oil – 1 tbsp

Salt – to taste

Oil -to fry

Powder the fried gram dall and the  chillies in the blender. Mix the flours ,cumin seeds, asfoetida, sesame seeds ,butter / oil , salt  with water.Load the dough into a murukku press. Make long strips on a greased plastic sheet/ ziploc bag simultaneously coiling them into spirals.Deep fry in oil on both sides.

                                  

          Murukku press – Much easier than the old styled press.

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Diwali is approaching

Next saturday is diwali, but there are no signs of it. There are no advertisements with  Sneha dancing inside  Saravana Stores (as rightly called ‘Indian Walmart’ by vinod ) .There is no shopping list in my hand bag to keep me wander in the busy streets of Ranganathan street. There are no  kids in my street  bursting crackers. There are no film previews about the diwali releases.

Still, there are ways to encourage our kids to  anticipate the upcoming festival. I thot of  making a homemade sweet my daughter  likes the most.Though , I learnt it  at late from my friend, I  was confident to try myself and it turned  out a real success. Here is the recipe.

 To make  20 medium sized laddus:

Ingredients:

Sugar – 1 and 1/2  cups

water- 1 and 1/2 cups

Gram flour- approx 2 cups

rice flour- 2 tsps

Orange food color- a pinch

warm milk- 1 tsp

saffron – 2 pinch

cardomom- 7-8 nos

cloves- 3 nos

Nutmeg- 1/8 th the ball

Edible camphor/ pacha karpooram- 3 pinches

Cashews & Raisins – to taste

How to make laddu:

Sieve the gram flour .

Mix the saffron in the warm milk.

Boil the sugar and water in a non stick   pan. Bring it to 1 string consistency.

Add food color and the saffron.

Heat good amount oil in a kadai.

Mix the gram flour and rice flour with water without any crumbles. The consistency should be like that of  a bajji mix. When the oil is real hot, pour the mix via a laddu laddle and take it when it is cooked 3/4th. Damp out the extra oil  with a paper  towel and soak it in the sugar syrup. Continue this without break until all the syrup is absorped well. Note: It is important that the mix to be in correct consistency. If it is watery, it will get burnt , else if it is too thick , the boondis will not have a round shape.

Let the boondis get soaked for 1-2 hours.

Powder cardomom, nutmeg, cloves and  camphor in a coffee grinder. Now add this to the boondis and run them in a food processor/ wet grinder coarsely for few seconds.

Roast the raisins and cashews in ghee and add to boondi mix.

Make balls of uniform size and enjoy eating

Wish you all a happy diwali!

Food for thot: ‘Diwali in Sivakasi’ – A poem by Srinivasan.

As suggested by Indira, I am happy to submit this entry for JFI.

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