The
glittering diyas, the bright, vivid hues of a meticulously rendered rangoli
and the warm appetizing aroma of fried snacks hanging buoyantly in the air while
my spirited family and friends gather around the porch to light up firecrackers–
this is all that Diwali means to me. The celebration of virtue and compassion with
an inanely fair amount of lip-smackingly delicious snacks – that’s surely something
everyone wants to come together for. So to commemorate everything that makes
Diwali remarkable, I had resolved that no matter how difficult it might seem to
fit anything at all into my schedule right now, I am going to try and make as
many snacks as I can and replicate “our gharwali” Diwali and this being our
very first one after the wedding made it extra worth the effort. So homemade
snacks, decorating up our home with lots of diyas, rangoli and lights, a celebration with friends and lots of food to share for our potluck –
that became the highlight for our Diwali festivities this year.
And so it
all began with making a list of usual Diwali snacks or faral that I wanted to
make – Besan sooji ladoo, Chivda, Karanji, Shankarpale, Masala Mathri and one
entrée for the potluck. I had already had experience with making Besan sooji ladoo and Chivda, so while making those were a breeze, everything else was somewhat tasking yet an extremely delightful learning curve. Making of each of these individual snacks taught me
a few lessons I learnt along the way and I resolved to make sure that I document
it well for my reference for Diwali faral making next year. I am sure a lot of
you might have had similar experiences and you know very well how much having to
re-do something from scratch teaches you. So this will be a series of posts
with all these recipes I learnt this Diwali and my kitchen centric adventures with them.
The center of discussion for my first post is the perfectly sweet and crunchy,
melt-in-your mouth shankarpale or as I knew it – “Mitha Gaja”. Mitha gaja/
Shankarpale has always been one of my favorite snacks that my grandma made. It
was her specialty and so uniquely hers. One fine day if we found mitha gaja at
our place, we would know who sent it. I have even been lucky enough to have
observed her make it and considered myself privileged to have been allowed to
cut the rolled out dough into its characteristic diamond shapes. At that time, being a part
of something so intricate had made me inanely happy and extremely proud of myself. So as I began my adventure of making
mitha gaja, I of course knew who to call for help. My grandma seemed so elated
to share her knowledge built over the years with great detail and of course
with very encouraging words. With a help and a little bit of trial and error, I got it. These turned out exactly as I like them and I was the happiest little bird in town.
So here’s the detailed mitha gaja recipe which
resulted in perfectly sweet, melt-in-your-mouth multilayered gaja that I so
loved and am very happy to write it down for your and my own reference for Diwali faraal making next year. t.
~Mitha Gaja / Shankarpale~
These crispy, flaky, melt-in-the-mouth sweetened fried festive snacks are a must-eat during Diwali. Made up of simple easily found at-home ingredients, these diamond shaped goodies are usually over before you know it.
Ingredients: (Makes enough to fill a 1 lt jar)
½ C Milk
½ C Sugar
½ C Ghee
2 C + 2 Tablespoons Maida/All purpose flour
Method:
1. Warm up the milk till it just boils and add the sugar
to it. Let them sit.
Note: I microwaved the milk at 100% power for 1 minute and
it was warm enough. The whiteness of the milk will look diluted and
transparent. Do not panic, that’s ok.
2. In a seperate mixing bowl, pour the ghee and fluff it
with kneading action such that it becomes creamy (about 4-5 mins).
Note: I used the flat beater attachment on my Kitchen Aid stand
mixer and let the mixture turn light & fluffy (~ 2-3mins).
3. Once the ghee turns fluffy, add in the milk-sugar
mixture and stir it a little bit.
4.Then, add in the flour little by little and bring it
together. Knead for ~ 1 min and keep aside.
5. Divide in to 5-6 rounds balls and roll it 1/4 inch
thick.
6. Cut diagonals on the roti and fry.
7. Fry these at medium- medium low heat (the knob of the
gas range stays around 5-6 on a scale of 10). When you add it to the oil keep
it at medium so that the exterior seals. Then lower the heat slightly for it to
cook through and harden.
Note: At very low temperature the dough dissolves, so make
sure that when you add the pieces to the oil its at medium (5 on a scale of
1-10) and then lower it to 4 when the exterior sets.
8. Take them out on paper towels, let them cool and store
it in air-tight containers.
So until the part II..(which will be coming up soon!!)
