A snack from Gujarat, Khandvi

Khandvi is a very popular snack from the western state of Gujarat, India. It is prepared by rolling out cooked chickpea flour and yogurt mixture into swirls. My neighbors back home are from Gujarat and it was always on their party menus. Back then, I did not really care much for it and I barely remembered how it tasted, until I saw this post almost couple of years ago. I bookmarked the recipe and never ended up making it, just like the  most of the bookmarked recipes. A few months later, I discovered that the mithai (sweet) stores in Jackson Heights sell khandvi and I started buying it from them, whenever I craved for some. While I ate store bought khandvi, Mr.U enjoyed homemade khandvi his colleague gets to work. After tasting the homemade authentic khandvi, U doesn’t like the khandvi I get from the store. By now you must be wondering why I am telling you all this? Well, there is a reason for that. Thanks to Srivalli, I made khandvi couple of days ago.  U did not taste it and hence I can not compare my preparation to the  khandvi he relishes so much at work!  And more over, amongst the two of us, he is the only one who has had the luxury of tasting the homemade khandvi in recent times!  All I can tell you though is that mine was lot better than the store bought khandvi!

ICC for this month is, you guessed it right, Khandvi! I followed Lathaji’s recipe with a few changes. I made two batches. The first batch tasted similar to the store bought khandvi and I was not satisfied with it. The trick to this preparation is cooking the flour mixture to the right consistency. I felt the first batch was a little under cooked and tasted raw. So I made it gain! The second batch, I cooked it a little longer, an additional 30 – 60 seconds and it turned out yum. Although this preparation came out good, I do need to prepare it a few more times to master it. I made twice the given recipe, as I ended up making it twice. There are many khandvi preparation videos on youtube. I wish I had seen those videos before preparing it!   If you are making it for the first time, I would suggest you watch them before rushing off to your kitchen to make these delicacies!

Source: Lathaji

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Yields: 25 – 30 (depends on the size)

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup Gram Flour
• 1/3 Yogurt (sour would be better)
• 1 cup water
• 1” (approx.. when chopped aprrox. ½ tsp – ¾ tsp) Ginger peeled
• 2-3 Green Chilies (adjust to taste or omit if you don’t want it spicy)
• 1 tsp lime Juice (opt. if yogurt not sour)
• ¾ tsp – 1 tsp Salt (adjust to taste)
• ½ tsp Turmeric
• 3 tbsp Oil

Tempering:

• ¾ – 1 tsp Oil
• ¼ tsp Mustard Seeds
• ¼ tsp Sesame Seeds
• 2 Curry Leaves
• 2 Green Chilies chopped

Method:

• Grind 2-3 green chilies and the ginger to paste.
• Mix lime juice, ground paste, salt, turmeric and gram flour  in a bowl.
• In a separate bowl whisk the yogurt.   Add water to it and continue whisking it to make buttermilk. Add this buttermilk to flour and mix it using a whisk. Make sure there are no lumps in the flour buttermilk mixture.
• Grease a plate or baking sheet with oil and keep aside. I used 2 baking sheet and greased the back of the sheets. For one sheet I lined the back of it with an aluminium foil  and then greased it.  In videos on you-tube, they did not grease the sheets.  I should try ungreasing the sheets and see if it helps spreading of the mixture easily.
  

• In a skillet, heat 3 tbsp of oil. Reduce the heat to medium and add the flour mixture. Stir the mixture continueously to avoid formation of lumps. Stirring it continuously, cook for about 3 minutes. By now the mixture will come together and separate from the pan. Make sure it should not be too thick either.
  

• Immediately transfer the mixture to the baking sheet or a plate and spread it out thinly. This should be done very quickly. As the mixture cools, it gets thicker and becomes difficult to spread it out.
• Cut it into 1 – 1 ½ “ wide strips. Let it cool and roll them into swirls.
• Arrange the khandvi or the swirls in a serving platter.
• In a skillet or pan heat the oil for tempering. Add mustard seeds and when they start spluttering, add curry leaves, green chilies and sesame seeds.  Turn off the heat.  Pour this over the khandvi and serve.

One quick announcement before I let you go. Srivalli and few other bloggers are on a one month blogging marathon. They started it on the beginning of the month are going to do it all thru this month, posting at least one post/recipe a day. I am joining them today onwards. You could say I am doing a half month marathon, 15 days only and lets see how long I can keep up with fellow marathoners.