DIWALI PALAHARAM

Murukku or Thenkuzhal for Diwali / Deepavali

Recipe source: my MIL (she uses estimates for all ingredients, adding and mixing as we go but we've tried to pin it down for you if you are new to this)

Ingredients:
1 cup of rice flour 
3 tsp of urad dal flour (roast urad dal and powder it fine in a mixer or coffee grinder) 
2 tbsp more or less, butter (we used Amul butter, yum!) 
A generous pinch of hing / perungayam / asafoetida 
1/2 tsp of cumin seeds / jeera 
1/2 tsp of white or black sesame seeds 
1/2 to 3/4 tsp of salt 


Makes about 15 pieces


How It's Made:

1. Mix the rice flour with the salt, hing, and urad dal flour. Cut the butter into small pieces and add to this. Mix gently with fingertips until it represents coarse sand.

2. Add the cumin and sesame seeds. It's fine to stick with one but I wanted to taste both of them so we added both.

3. Mix it well to incorporate well into the dough. It will begin to come together and hold it's shape when you press it in your palm. If it's too dry at this stage, add a little more butter. Don't go overboard because otherwise the murukku won't hold it's shape when you fry it.

4. Now, add enough water to make a soft dough, not too watery but forms a dent when you press down with your fingertips. If it's too watery, adjust by adding a bit more rice flour and a few sprinkles of urad dal flour. Don't panic at any stage, everything is fixable in this snack recipe.

5. Fill a murukku mould gently with enough mixture without pressing it down too hard.

 

6. Heat a kadai with enough oil to deep fry the murukku. When it's almost smoking hot, press the mould over the oil lightly until enough batter comes out. Swirl the mould so that you get overlapping batter worming out.

If you are a novice, you can press the thenkuzhal over a slotted spoon and gently introduce into the hot oil.

7. Fry until it becomes golden brown. Different people have their own preferences on how much they like to fry their thenkuzhal. Personally, I prefer it somewhere in the middle so I would try to get the golden brown colour.

That's it, we are done. Once cool, store in airtight containers. Keeps well for about 4-5 days if it lasts that long!

Hope you all are enjoying your Diwali cooking and sweet-making :)