Deepavali is a festival of colour and lights and is celebrated with much zeal and enthusiasm throughout the country. In South India too, we love celebrating Deepavali or Diwali, as it is also called. Not only do we get to see lights all around us, but we also meet our family and near ones and go the extra mile to make delicious food that you will ideally not make any other time.

So if your cooking mode is on for this Diwali, here are some easy and delicious recipes you too can try. Starting with this yummy snack called Benne Murukku. Without further ado, let’s begin…

Ingredients:

Rice Flour, Roasted Gram, Gram Flour, Asafoetida, Jeera seeds, Turmeric Powder, Salt, Butter, Oil

Preparation:

Make a fine paste of 1/4 cup of roasted gram in a mixer-grinder and ensure there are no lumps. In a big container add 1 cup of rice flour and 1/4 cup of roasted gram flour (that you just ground). Then, add 1/4 cup of gram flour. To this, add salt, a big pinch of asafoetida, cumin seeds and a pinch of turmeric powder.

You can also add some red chilli powder for more spice (optional). Add the butter and mix well until it becomes a soft dough-like consistency. Heat oil in a pan and take the dough to fit it into a chakli maker. Once the oil has heated start squeezing the equipment to make long lines.

You can shape these in any manner as you wish. Serve hot or at room temperature!

Ingredients:

Maida, Split Bengal Gram, Jaggery, Grated Dry Coconut, Cardamom Powder, Poppy Seeds and Oil.

Preparation:

For the obbattu stuffing, start with a making a dough out of maida and leave aside to rest. Then, in a mixer-grinder, add the poppy seeds to make a fine powder. In a bowl, add these contents and use the same mixer-grinder to grind the split gram into a fine powder. Take some jaggery in a pan followed by some water.

Keep mixing the ingredients until there is a boil on all sides. Add the grated coconut, some cardamom powder and give everything a good mix. Now, in small portions, keep adding the gram flour and poppy seeds powder to the pan. The aim is to get one lump of filling, so if you have a runny mixture, it has to be reduced until it comes together.

Once it is cool, make equally-proportionate balls. After rubbing some oil in your palms and placing a plastic sheet, make some small balls of the maida and spread out with fingers like a small chapati on the sheet. Now, add the filling in each chapati and pack it all together into one nice round ball.

With your fingers, again spread out the obattu on the plastic sheet. Once done, place it on a low-heating pan and fry till cooked. Serve hot and with some ghee!

Ingredients:

Ghee, Cashews, Raisins, Sooji (Rava), Water, Sugar, Saffron Water, Cardamom Powder

Preparation: 

In a pan, add 2 tbsp of Ghee, 10 cashews and 1 tbsp of Raisins. Roast all this on a low flame until the cashews turn golden brown. Remove only the cashews from this mix and set aside. Add 1/2 cup of rava to the same ghee you used earlier and roast for around five minutes on a low flame before setting aside to cool.

Take another pan and add 1 cup of water and the rava you had kept cool to earlier. Don’t forget, you must stir quickly until all the water is absorbed by rava. Also, make sure that there are absolutely no lumps formed. Now, based on how sweet you want this dish to be you can start adding sugar starting from a 3/4th cup measurement onwards.

Stir this sugar on a low flame until it dissolves completely. Side-by-side, soak a few strands of Saffron for approx 15 mins, in 2 tbsp of water. Then, in the pan in which the Kesari bath is cooking in, add the saffron water along with 1/4 cup of ghee and continue stirring.

When you see no lumps cover with a lid and cook for an additional two minutes. Turn off the flame and add the roasted cashews, 1/4 tsp of cardamom powder and additional dry fruit topping of your choice and give this all a good mix. It’s serving time!

Ingredients:

Rice Flour, Fried Gram, Groundnut/Peanut, Chiroti Rava/Maida Flour, Grated Coconut, Red Chilli Powder, Salt, Carom Seeds, Asafoetida, Curry Leaves, Oil

Preparation: 

Roast the rice flour lightly with the chiroti rava (or maida) on low heat. As soon as you feel that the mixture is heated enough, switch off the gas. Take a small spoon of fried gram and mix this with the rice flour-rava/maida mix. With the rest of the 1/4 cup of fried gram flour, make a dry powder in a mixer grinder.

Add some ground powder of roasted raw peanuts and mix further. Now, mix in the fried ingredients, i.e, asafoetida, salt, carom seeds and red chilli powder to the bowl and give it all a good mix. The curry leaves and grated coconut come into the picture now.

Now take 3 tablespoons of hot oil and add it to the mixture. Form a hard dough-like consistency and roll out the dough (a little thicker than a chapati). Take a round cutter (any object with sharp round edges in your kitchen) and cut out even circles before frying in hot oil. Serve crispy Nipattus to your loved ones!

Let us know which dish you are going to make this Deepavali, in the comments box given below.

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