Crisp murukku

The hostel I stayed has this rule wherein all students stay in a common room for the first few months. Common rooms are allotted based on the batch, year and course of study. So the 7 girls who joined the course I enrolled for got to share a room. Kerala is notorious for its power cuts. Even before the rest of the country woke up to the reality of power cuts, we were used to having no power twice a day for half an hour each. Joining a new course, sharing a room with no fans(or was there one fan?) with seven other girls, trying to read a book in the dim glow of the yellow bulb in low voltage - all this might not seem very appealing, but believe me, when I think back, I hardly remember the lack of creature comforts. What I remember is making 2 minute Maggi for an hour in a kettle that took forever to boil water because of the low voltage, using an iron box to roast papads(trust me....it works.....though I would recommend cleaning the iron really well before using it on your clothes again), eating your friend's dates pickle with bread at midnight because you just felt like it, staying out well past midnight on days there was a fest in the university and days when there weren't any, eating at thattukadas(roadside eateries on wheels) and drinking tea at all times of the day. Though our hostel food was nothing to write home about, all seven of us piled our plates high with rice, helped ourselves to the watery brown thing that passed off for sambar, the vegetable that was usually decent and then, we added our secret ingredient which we hoarded and ate a little of every day - something that was packed with love from home. It could be dates pickle one day, beetroot pickle the next, Vathal kozhambu mix, paruppu podi or curry leaves powder another day - and it is these little parcels of food from home that ensured that our taste buds didn't die a slow death brought on by the sourest yoghurt that mankind ever saw. I got into the habit of eating murukku or ribbon pakoda with rice during my years in the hostel. There were days when bread, jam and murukku translated into a tasty breakfast. This murukku that I am sharing with you today is tasty, crisp and keeps well for a long time if stored in an air tight box.


What you need: (Recipe source : 100 murukkus and mixtures - Mallika Badrinath)
Rice flour - 1 cup
Bengal gram flour/besan - 1 cup
Roasted gram flour/pottukadala maavu - 1 cup
Salt - to taste
Red chilli powder - to taste
Sesame seeds - 1 tbsp
Vegetable shortening/vanaspati - 1.5 tbsp
Water
Oil - for deep frying(I used Fortune Rice Bran Health oil which I have reviewed here)

Take all the flours in a large mixing bowl.  Add the vegetable shortening and blend well with your finger tips until the flour is crumbly.

 A test to know if you have added enough shortening is to shape the flour into a ball after mixing the shortening well. If it holds its shape you have added enough fat.
 
Add sesame seeds, salt and red chilli powder. Mix well.
 












Now add water little by little and knead to thick dough.

Using the three star shaped disc, prepare small murukkus on a polythene sheet.

Once you have four or five, deep fry them in hot oil.

Drain off excess oil and once completely cool, store in an airtight container.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#26
This post is a part of Healthy & Tasty Recipe Contest with Fortune Rice Bran Health Oil & BlogAdda.com 
This goes to Kamalika who is hosting Kids' Delight, brain child of Srivalli, themed on Back to Hostel Food.

Hot off the stove - ICC Sago Murukku

I forgot all about this month's Indian Cooking Challenge until I saw Valli's post this morning. Thinking that I still had the rest of today to make it, I soaked sago in buttermilk in the morning. It fluffed up beautifully by evening and I was all set to make the murukku. That's when the trouble started. There were two packets of identical white flours in the freezer - one clearly labelled rice flour and the other with no label. The labelled pack contained about 3/4th of a cup of flour. I was quite sure the other one was maida though I couldn't tell. I decided to add some water to it to see if it was sticky, but that didn't enlighten me any further. Anyways, I decided that if it was maida, so be it....I was still going to make murukku with it. All the flours were duly mixed and I started squeezing the dough out of the murukku press. That was disaster no.2. I used the achu with three circular holes in it....and it was really, really hard to squeeze the dough out. I tried making it more watery, but that didn't help. The murukku kept breaking out in pieces. The end product does look quite good, though....reminds me of serial lights with little white bulbs at the end.

After 15 minutes of struggling with it, I decided to use another achu and used the one with three star shaped holes in it. I squeezed it into the oil fully expecting it to be just as difficult to squeeze out....but no, that seems to be the one thing I did right....it slid out of the press quite easily and in another 15 minutes, I'd used up all the dough and had a dabba-ful of tasty, crunchy murukkus.

The murukku felt chewy when it was just out of the oil, but turned perfectly crunchy on cooling.
Here is Valli's recipe:
What you need:

Rice Flour 2 cups
Besan flour 1/2 cup
Fried gram flour - 1/2 cup
Sago - 1/2 cup
Salt to taste
Curd - 1/4 cup
Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp or as per taste

To make:
Soak Sago in Butter milk for 3 hrs, please ensure that you soak it enough else you may risk having the sago burst.

Mix all the flour together, heat 50 gms oil, mix to the flour along with salt and chili powder. Then add the buttermilk soaked sago slowly and knead to a chapati dough consistency

Heat oil for deep frying.In the murukku achu, add the dough. When the oil is hot, press down directly as as murukkus.

Cook on medium flame to ensure the murukku is cooked well.

Notes:
Ensure sago soaks in buttermilk well and is soft or else it will burst when you press it down in hot oil.
Cook on medium to ensure even cooking.
Fried Gram flour is fried channa dal that is available commercially. It is general sold as the dal, we have to powder it at home. This is also referred as chutney dal as it is used in making coconut chutney.

Murukku for Indian Cooking Challenge

The challenge for this month was Murukku. I tried this out within almost a week of coming to know that this was what we were supposed to be making.
As far as the recipe goes, I followed it exactly. The only thing I would do differently next time is use ready made rice flour. I know Valli said making rice flour at home from the scratch would give us a kick.....but me being me, the only kick it give me is a mental kick for not having used ready made flour. I spent ages and ages trying to powder the rice finely and ended up with something that was a little finer than rava.....I didn't have the patience to keep going beyond that. Inspite of that the murukku turned out to be really tasty albeit a little grainy. Oh.....and the original recipe will give you a LOT of murukku. So next time around, maybe I'll halve the recipe.

Here is the recipe:

What you need:

Raw Rice - 4 cups
Urad Dal - 1 cup
Water - app 1/2 cup or more

For Seasoning
Cumin seeds - 1 tsp
Sesame seeds- 1 tsp
Asafetida/ Hing - 1/2 tsp
Salt to taste
Butter - 75 gms


Wash and drain the rice. Shade dry the Rice for 1/2 hr. Dry roast the Urad dal to light brown. Allow it to cool.
If you are using more quantity, you can get it ground in rice mil, else use your mixie to grind both Rice and Urad dal.

First grind rice into a fine flour, keep it aside. then grind the urad dal to fine powder.

In a wide vessel, take both the flours along with salt. Mix well. Add cumin, Sesame seeds to the flour, mix well.
Mix in the hing to the flour and finally add the butter. Gather everything well and you will get more of a crumbling mixture. Now slowly add water and knead a dough which is little more softer than the puri dough.
Heat a kadai with oil enough to deep fry. Once the oil is hot enough, simmer to low flame.
Take the Muruku Aachu, wash and wipe it clean. Then divide the dough into equal balls. Fill the Muruku maker with the dough. You can either press it directly over the flames or press over a paper and gently slide it down the hot oil. But since the quantity mentioned here is less, you can press it directly over the kadai.
Cook over medium flame, using a slotted spoon, turn it over to other side to ensure both sides turn golden colour. You will know by seeing the colour that its cooked. Remove to a kitchen paper and store it in a air tight container.

Since I packed this away almost as soon as I made it to take to my SIL, I don't have any pics of the murukku. It did look decent.....you'll just have to take my word for it!!!