Diwali recipes

Twisting, turning, going round and round with a crunch in each bite – this is our majestic chakli.

Making the chakli is no joke but once you have mastered the art you are not going to stop. The chakli is going to make a permanent place for itself in your snack rack.

When you get a wholewheat chakli the benefits are going to double. No worries of refined flour. On the contrary this chakli has an equal balance of protein too in the form of besan (gram flour).

My mother-in-law got this recipe from some friend long time back and it has stayed with us since then. I won’t say this is a low calorie recipe but it does use a little less oil than the others. But there is no compromise on the crunch.

One cup of wheat flour and one cup of gram flour and in all this we add only two tablespoons of ghee. Apart from this is the unavoidable deep frying oil.

There are two parts to this recipe – first we prepare the flour and then we prepare the dough. The flour can be prepared and stored upto week in advance.

Here goes the recipe

Ingredients:

• Whole wheat flour – 1 cup
• Gram flour (Besan) – 1 cup
• Sesame seeds (Til) – 2 tbsp
• Ghee – 2 tbsp
• Red chilli powder – 2 tsp
• Salt – as per taste
• Oil for deep frying

Method – prepare the flour

Sieve the two flours together.

Place the flours in a large soft piece of cloth and tie it up into a bundle. We need to steam this flour.

Place the flour bundle in a steamer and turn on the heat. Mark the time. From start to finish, this flour has to be steamed for 20 minutes.

As soon as the time is up, take out the flour. The flour would be hard and stiff.

Break it up as soon as possible and make a fine flour of it. Sieve it once again to get rid of all the lumps.

Allow the flour to cool. You can store this flour in this state for upto a week.

Method – prepare the chakli

Add the chakli flour to a large mixing bowl. Add all the other ingredients except the oil of deep frying.

Adding a little water at a time, knead the flour into a soft dough.

Place the oil to heat. There should be enough to allow the chakli to float.

Fit the star shaped attachment to your chalk machine. (the one shown in the picture here)

This one will give you a hollow centre. If you do not have this one a simple star shaped one will also do.

Take your chakli machine and fill it with the prepared dough. Fill it upto an inch below the rim.

Now pressing the lever of the machine make spiral shaped chaklis.

When the oil is hot carefully slip the chaklis in. Let the chaklis cook on high flame for some time. When a little done, flip them over and lower the flame. This will ensure proper shaped and well cooked crispy chaklis.

If you add the chakli to cold oil the chaklis will break into pieces.

Prepare all the chaklis in a similar manner until you finish up the prepared dough.

Make sure to cook the chaklis once you have prepared the dough. DO NOT store the dough. Chaklis made out of stored dough do not turn out well.