My Culinary Trial Room

Monday, August 22, 2011

My Gokulashtami - 2011 | Thattai / Indian Savory Crackers

Hi u guys, hope you all had a blast celebrating Krishna Jayanthi - drawing the traditional krishnar paadam, putting maa kolam, making crunchy seedais etc,. When I was with my parents, mom used to make just a sweet, put maa kolam minus the krishnar paadam (psst… try as much she hasn’t got the paadam right till date) and we used to do a small prayer. The same repeated @ my MIL’s house too… But now away from both homes, me being the boss(i) of the home and inspired by all my blog friends putting up traditional Gokulashtami recipes, I was very much interested to do everything as passed down by our elders.

I am really awed by all my blog friends who have been posting recipes for Gokulashtami beforehand. Try as much, I don’t have the will to drag myself into the kitchen lest it is a compulsion or a necessity. To me, it is just a helter-skelter mess on the morning of the day in concern. So yesterday after breakfast, took a paper n pen and jotted out all the things that I wished to do. Going through all the blogs and drooling over all the pics cost me 2 hours with an empty paper in hand. Finally spent 5 mins and listed one savory snack and three sweets. Oh my.. forgot to announce! I am a sugar freak. Love rava kesari and paal payasam to the core. Out through the window goes my diet schedule on days of celebration and then I sweat an extra 20 mins on the thread mill to melt down the sugar-caused-fat.

This is the first time I got a Krishna toddler to celebrate the day… of course after permission from my mom and advices of “Donot get the Pulaangulal oodum Krishnan (Krishnan with flute – heard superstitions that he will blow of the happiness from the house and when told to huss contradicted it with “Why don’t you think that he would blow off the sorrows of the house?”. Finally settled down for the Vennai thirudum (the one who steals butter) and Thavalum Balakrishnan. I preferred the former while huss the latter but then after lots of pondering settled for Thavalum Balakrishnan. And now he sits beautifully in my pooja room with a small speck of butter in his mouth (courtesy: me)

Happy Birthday to you Krishna!!

Onto my Gokulashtami specials, I made thattai, peanut-sesame laddoos, rava kesari (Love it) and Ragi semiya payasam. All the sweets with sugar except for laddos with no concern about my diet. Oh I just love yesterday. So today I will be sharing the recipe for thattai and moving forward this week it will be recipes for all the others.

Thattai is an Indian savory cracker with the perfect blend of spiciness and crunchiness fit for our tea-time snacks and hunger swings. This is my first attempt in making this cracker and it came out so nice.

~*What U Need*~
Rice flour – 1 cup
Pottukadalai - ¼ cup minus 1 tbsp
Hing powder - a big pinch
Salt
Curry leaves - 1 sprig
Channa dhal - 1 tbsp
1.5 tbsp channa dal soaked for 2 hours
Dry red chillies - 2
Garlic cloves - 2

How I Made it:

Soak the channa dhal for 2 hrs(min). Powder the pottukadalai in a mixie. Grind the red chililes and garlic together into a paste. Use water if needed.
Mix the rice flour and pottukadalai flour. Add hing, salt, chilli-garlic paste, curry leaves and soaked channa dal. Mix together.
Using water form a stiff dough. Apply little oil on a plastic cover. Pinch a small ball out of the dough and place on the plastic cover. Flatten using fingers to form a circle.
Remove slowly. If it sticks, apply a drop of oil on the ziploc cover before flattening the next ball.
Heat oil and fry the thattais till evenly brown on both sides. Remove excess oil by placing on a paper towel.