FOOD : Sweet Bites : Flaky Fenori/Chiroti

Its been raining Sweets and Sweets this Diwali, though luckily Konstanz has been spared off some rains. The week has been quite good for the fact that its end of october. I have been in the mood to do some traditional sweets this diwali, may be because I'm out of India, and you know how Your Country and everything associated with it, calls out for you during such times. My mom does an excellent job with this sweet... So I thought I'd try too.. and the result was a Sweet, delectably flaky, crisp and 'Sweet'.

This is a very typical 'Amchi Konkani' Sweet, and I suggest you to start with small amounts. The base is Maida/All purpose flour and 1 cup of Maida will give you 11 Chiroti's. So that should be a good start. So my proportions will go accordingly.

1 cup of maida

Sugar-powdered and mixed with cardamom-kept ready in a dry bowl-you could use about 1.5-2 cups of sugar

Ghee-little

Salt-little

Water to knead the dough

Oil for frying

• In a bowl, take the maida, add little salt, and make a dough. Let the dough not be too tight.
• Now make 7 equal balls of it, each would be about 1.5" diameter.
• Now roll each of it to make a thin Chapathi-i mean THIN!!-thinner it is, the flakier it would be. Now you have 7 chapathi's.
• Keep one on a dry base, apply ghee over it.
• Place the 2nd such that it is offset from it say by about 1/2". Apply ghee over the 2nd one.
• Place the 3rd one, again offset from the 2nd by about 1/2". Repeat the process for all the 7. So at the end of it, you have 7 chapathi's with ghee in between each of it and offset from each other by 1/2".
• Start rolling the top one toward the lowest one. Let it not be too tight, nor too loose.
• So you have a rolled bundle of 7 flour chapathis.
• Take a knife and cut into 11 equal divisions. Each cross section will resemble the annual rings in the trunk of the tree! :-)
• Take each section of it, apply little flour on both sides, and place it on the flat side and roll it out to a round shape. It can go up to say about 4" diameter. Dont make it too thin, you might lose out on the flakes and layers.
• Deep fry each of it, till Crisp. Remove from oil and place it on a Kitchen Paper.
• Immediately take the powdered sugar with the cardamom and sprinkle it over one side till covered with the sugar. Since its hot, the sugar will stick easily onto that side. Flip and sprinkle sugar again on the other side.

Your Fenori's are ready. Store in an air tight container, might get soft otherwise. Bon Sweet Appetite!!