Indian Cooking Challenge: Kara Sev

Last month I missed Indian Cooking Challenge and the challenge was to prepare my favorite street food, Pani puri!  I was super busy and could not be part of last month’s challenge. Despite a busy schedule, I made it a point to make some time for this month’s savory recipe; Kara Sev.  I thought of drafting the post and  schedule it to be posted yesterday, the 15th.  I could not do so before I took off to west coast last week.  I still could have drafted it and posted it yesterday, but forgot to upload the picture from my laptop, before I left.  Just got back an hour ago and here I am composing and publishing this post.

Valli challenged us to prepare Kara Sev and the recipe is her mom’s.  She gave two recipes and I followed the first recipe. I followed the recipe as give but for the black pepper.  I substituted it with chili powder instead.  I used my muruku press to press the sev as I don’t have the sev ladle.   I copied and pasted Valli’s recipe below and striked out the parts of the recipe that I did not follow and italicized what I did instead.  Thanks Valli for sharing your mom’s recipe!

Print Recipe

• Gram Flour (Besan)- 2 1/2 cups
• Rice flour – 1 cup
• Chilli powder – 1/4 tsp
• Black pepper coarsely powdered chili powder- 1 tsp
• Ghee Oil – 2 1/2 tsp
• Cooking soda pinch (optional) I did not use it
• Salt to taste.
• Crushed garlic (optional) 2 pods
• Oil to deep fry.

• Sieve both Gram flour and Rice flour together in a bowl and make a pit.
• Add chilli powder, Pepper powder, Salt, Crushed garlic, Ghee, Cooking soda.
• Mix thoroughly with hands. It should look like bread crumbs. Divide the dough into 4 portions.
• Take One portion of this mixture, sprinkle water, knead like Puri dough.  Sprinkle required amount of water and knead like puri dough.  Make 6 small portions of dough and therefore  sev is done in six batches.
• Heat oil in a kadai, Use a ladle with lot of holes (Kara Sevai ladle) or Sev maker. Put some dough on that and rub directly into oil.
• It will be like split string. Deep fry in oil , drain excess oil.
• After cooling this off, Store this in an airtight container.