I always thought that the whole process involved way too much effort and have made a couple of attempts in the last oh, I don't know, 10 - 11 years.
For some reason I felt like trying it this weekend and because I am me, I had to rationalize the fact that I'm encouraging deep fried snacks in my home, so voila! Introducing my "healthy" version of this delicious, crunchy, popular snack.
Ingredients:
1 cup Rice flour
2 tbsp Jowar flour
2 tbsp Bajri flour
1 tbsp Oat flour
1/4 cup Whole Wheat flour
1/4 tsp Red Chilli pwd
1 tsp Cumin - counsels ground
1/16 tsp Asafoetida (Hing)
2 tsp Sesame seeds
1/8 tsp Tumeric pwd (Haldi)
Salt as per your taste
1 tbsp melted unsalted butter
2 cups Spinach leaves
1/2 cup Yogurt
1/4 cup Water
Oil for frying
Method:
Mix all the dry ingredients. Add the butter and mix again. Purée the spinach and yogurt together and add that to the mix and knead the dough. If needed, water can be added little by little to make a smooth green colored dough.
Grease the inside of your Chakli press and use the disc with the star shaped hole for pressing out the chaklis. The next steps are always a little difficult for me. Using the Chakli press, gently press out the dough and try to make a spiral circle. Press the tail of the spiral to the circle before it to make a concentric circle. I made these on a stainless steel flat spatula so that I could slide them gently into the hot oil for frying.
Heat the oil on high then fry the child's on medium high. Turn them over once while frying and then remove from the oil when golden brown with a tinge of green showing and put them on a plate lined with paper towels to soak the excess oil.
When the cool, enjoy them with hot tea or just by themselves.
Here is the recipe with some pictures: