Festival Foods: Making Chakli with Ammama

I've been waiting for this weekend! It's the weekend of Gowri-Ganpathi puja at home. And it's probably my favourite festival because it's the most elaborately celebrated in my family. Being from a coastal community that make the Gowri and Ganpathi with coconuts, and a lot of our food is made using coconut. 

But more on the traditional feast later.

Today I woke up early to help my Ammama - my maternal grandmother - to make chakli for Ganpathi puja. Chakli, chakri or murukku is a crisp swirl of dough made of roasted lentils and rice, which is deep-fried to divinity!

Ammama had already roasted the urad daal,  chana daal and rice, and gotten it powdered at the nearby mill. This morning she kneaded it into a dough, adding a more than generous knob of butter to make it short and crisp. The apt Konkani adjective for the desired texture of the chakli is "nurnuri"!

I was keen to learn the technique from my grandmother, especially since I love her homemade chaklis so much! There's a special feeling in making the festival snacks with your grandmother in the morning, on the eve of the celebration.

Once the dough was made, I pushed large chunks of it into the heavy extruder with the star shaped die and pressed swirls of chakli onto a sheet before carefully dropping them into hot oil. This was no easy task. But eventually I got the hang of it. I did end up with sore fingers at the end of it. But that wasn't even the hardest part. The hardest part is having to wait till tomorrow, until after Ganpathi puja where the chakli is offered to Ganpathi, to be allowed to eat them!