The Indian Food Court

We prepare varieties of chaklies. Here is a surprise to you all. You might not even have dreamt of Chakli being prepared with Sugarcane juice, did you ! This is my mother-in-law’s recipe. Nothing fancy in terms of effort – just as any of the other Chaklis I have put up before -  Rice Atta Chakli, Moong Dal Chaklis and Maida Chaklis.

What you need to have:

1. Fine rice atta – 5 cups

2. All purpose flour/Maida – 1 cup

3. Dalia Dal – 1 cup

4. Butter – 1 cup

5. White or Black pepper – 2 Teaspoons

6. Cumin seeds – 1 Teaspoon

7. Sesame seeds – 3-4 Teaspoons

8. Sugarcane juice – 2 and 1/4 cups (approx.)

Ingredients of Sugarcane juice Chakli

What you do with what you have:

1. Clean Dalia Dal to throw away the small/hard ones. Dry grind cleaned Dal with cumin seeds and pepper in a mixer to very fine powder.

2. Sieve ground Dalia dal powder, maida, salt and rice atta in the siever 2-3 times so that it gets mixed evenly and is as shown in the image below.

Sieved Dalia dal atta, Rice and maida

3. Add butter and salt as well to the sieved powder, press it and keep it aside for about 15 minutes. The sieved powders mixed with the other ingredients would be as shown in the image below.

Sieved powders with butter

3. Mix sesame seeds, 2 cups sugarcane juice (little less than above mentioned quantity) slowly to the sieved powder and then add remaining 1/4 cup as necessary to ensure that you have a dough that has the the consistency of chakli dough. You can ensure this by checking that the dough should not touch your palm or fingers. The dough, the pinched out part and the subsequently knead ball is as shown in the image below.

The knead ball and the chakli dough

4. Place the knead dough into the chakli mould as shown in the image below

The knead chakli dough into the Chakli mould

5. Press and make Chakli on a plastic sheet.

Sugarcane juice Chakli on a plastic sheet

6. Place a skillet with 4-5 cups of fresh cooking oil in it on a medium flame. When heated deep fry the above chaklies on both the sides till dark brown.

The fried crispy chaklis up here, relish it only on cooling

Number of Chaklis: 70-80

How long it takes: 2 hours

Good to remember:

1. The quantity of sugarcane juice mentioneed surely holds good to the above mentioned quantity of powders. But just in case the powders are a little coarse (which it should not be) or the quality of the rice atta is such that it does not hold much juice, be careful about adding too much more juice. Instead add normal water a little to set it right.

2. When you fry the chakli, you feel that they are a little soggy. But on cooling it will be super fine. So relax !