I present you one my favorite recipes from my childhood days. As I released a spoiler of this dish in advance in My Kitchen Experiments's Fb page, by now many of you would have come to know this recipe. Yes, its the Thukkada. It is nothing but crispy, savory diamond cuts which perfectly pairs with tea/coffee.
My Mom makes it often when no snacks are available for us to accompany coffee/tea time. My sis and myself always fight for making the diamond shapes when my mom prepares this recipe. I was recollecting those sweet wonderful memories when I prepared this.
There are 2 versions (Sweet and Spicy) and I know many of you like the spicy version a lot. I will be posting the sweet version soon. The one which I posted here is a generic version of the spicy thukkada. You are free to innovate and bring out different variations of this dish.
I have heard that this recipe is also known as Shankerpale in Kannada. The Kannada variant is a bit thicker.
Basic Information:
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Cooking Time: 20 minutes
Makes: 5 cups approx.
Ingredients:
Wheat flour - 3 cups
Salt - to taste
Oil - 1 tablespoon, preferably hot oil
Dry red chillies - 11-12 nos
Garlic - 2 cloves
Cumin seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
Ajwain seeds - 1/2 teaspoon (optional)
Asafoetida - a big pinch
Oil - for deep frying
Method:
1) Grind dry red chillies, cumin seeds, ajwain seeds, garlic cloves to a fine paste by adding small quantity of water.
2) In a mixing bowl, take wheat flour,oil (I added oil while making a dough) and salt. Mix well. Add the ground spice paste(as said in step 1) to this. Mix again.
3) Start adding water slowly and make a very tight dough. Taste and adjust the salt if required.
4) Divide the dough into equal sized balls.
5) Roll each of the balls into round shape like how we roll for chapatis. Use wheat flour or oil for easy rolling.
6) Using a knife or pizza cutter, cut into diamond shapes.
7) Transfer them to a wide plate and keep aside for 4-5 minutes. Meanwhile roll and cut diamond shapes using remaining dough.
8) After 5 minutes fry them in oil. The temperature of the oil should not be very hot and not very low. It should be in medium temperature.
9) Once thukkadas become crisp and changed in colour, transfer them to a plate covered with kitchen tissue to absorb excess oil.
10) Enjoy well.
Note:
1) Instead of dry red chilli and garlic paste, you can simply use red chilli powder along with cumin seeds and ajwain seeds.
2) The colour of the thukkada is purely based on red chilli powder and level of frying.
3) Make thin diamond shapes for very crispy thukkadas.
