Thattai/ Thattai Murukku

Thattai is a crispy dry snack famous in Tamil Nadu, made to relish during tea time and also during festivals in bulk as it has a pretty good shelf time. Anyone from a traditional tamil family will be familiar or in fact be a fan of this tasty snack.

M loves this snack and I make them often just in small quantities to long for a week or two. The sight of m savoring the snacks with his favorite ginger tea makes me very happy that I do futterwacken(Anyone know hatter from Alice in Wonderland?). For that case M tasting and enjoying anything is a rare sight. He doesn’t appreciate so easily and naturally he’s a picky eater too.  So this thattai happens to be my saver on odd times when he gets hungry!

Ingredients:

Rice Flour/Arisi maavu-2 cups (I used instant idiyappam flour)

Urad dal flour *-2 tbsp

Roasted gram flour/pottukadalai Maavu *-1/2 cup

Channa Dal-2 tbsp

Red chili powder-1 &1/2 tsp

Butter-2 tbsp

Sesame seeds-1 tbsp

Hing-1/4 tsp

Salt-as needed

Oil- For deep frying

How It Happened:

1. Wash and soak the channa dal in water for half an hour. Roast the urad dal until it wafts nice aroma, cool it, grind it to a fine powder, sieve it and store it. Just grind the roasted gram dal to a fine powder.

2. In a mixing bowl add all the ingredients mentioned above except oil. Add channa dal after draining the water completely. Mix well. Then slowly add water little by little and keep kneading to form stiff dough. Keep kneading until it comes together forming a non-sticky dough.

3. Divide the dough into equal sized portions and make smooth balls. I got around 30 medium sized pieces for this dough.

4. Heat enough oil in a kadai to deep fry, meanwhile, take a zip-lock or plastic cover grease a little oil, place a dough ball then place another zip lock cover over it, using a flat bottomed bowl, just press it hard enough to make a evenly thick round disk. Pierce using a fork here and there so it doesn’t puff up when frying.

5. Now carefully slide in one thattai and adjust the flame and cook carefully turning both sides until it turns golden and well cooked.

6. Drain from the oil and set aside. Follow the procedure for rest of the dough and fry all the thattais.

7. Cool it and store it in a dry air tight container. Crunchy home-made snacks ready for tea time.

Notes:

* Shredded coconut, curry leaves are other ingredients that can be added to increase the flavor. Normally these thattai stays good for 10-15 days if properly stored. When you add coconut the shelf life may be a little less

* Channa dal should be soaked else they will be too hard to chew.

* Always keep the dough covered else the surface will become dry and when you make thattai, it cracks off the edges.

* The thattai shouldn’t be too thick else it won’t get cooked in the middle. It shouldn’t be too thin else it may break when cooking in oil.

* The oil should be hot while dropping in the thattai but adjust and cook in medium flame. Also cook for a little more time even after bubbling stops so that the center of the thattai gets cooked well.

* Roasted Gram flour adds nice flavor to the thattai. Do not add more roasted gram flour than mentioned else, they will soak up a lot of oil while frying and will make the thattai crumbly and might dissolve in the oil.