Karasev

Karasev is a a South Indian snack made with besan flour, rice flour and some spices like chilli powder and pepper corns. There are lot of variations in this karasev, like spicy karasev, garlic karasev, motasev, pepper karasev, sattur karasev etc.  I made Garlic karasev in a tradition way by rubbing the dough through Karasev ladle bought from Madurai during my last visit. Now I made karasev to send it to my daughter through her friend who is staying in abroad.It is a crunchy evening tea time snack and an easy diwali snacks recipe to prepare for this festive occasion

 

Ingredients:

Bengal gram flour – 2 1/2 cups

Rice flour – 1 cup

Pure Ghee or butter –1 1/2 tblsp

Cooking soda – a pinch

Powdered salt – as needed

water- as needed

Oil for deep frying

Grind to smooth paste:

Long red chillies – 5 or red chilli powder 1 tsp

Garlic – 4 to 5 flakes

Black pepper – 1 tsp

 

Method:

1.Peel the skin of garlic cloves and grind it to a paste . Crush whole pepper in a mixer or hand motor coarsely.

2.Sieve Bengal gram flour/ besan, rice flour together. Rub ghee and soda together till frothy on a flat plate.

3.Add this to the flour and mix well till it blends properly. To this add salt,pepper powder or red chilli powder,garlic paste and butter or ghee.Mix well to make a crumbly mixture. Then 4.Add water and make a thick dough. (For that perfect crispness and texture, one needs to make sure that the dough is smooth and soft enough to squeeze. In case it is too tightly bound, it is a good idea to sprinkle in some more water and knead again.)

5.Heat enough oil in a pan then place lemon size portion of dough and press onladle for the batter to fall directly into the oil. so that long pieces of dough falls into the hot oil.  Rub continuously by gathering all the excess dough.

6.Stir after a minute and deep fry on medium hot oil till crisp.Transfer to a plate and repeat the process again until all the batter is used up. let it cool & store in an airtight container

Note: wipe the ladle with a wet cloth each time. Otherwise the dough may stick to the holes and when it dries, it will be difficult to rub the dough again on the ladle during next time.

If the dough is too soft, it means there is too much of water, which means, it will absorb more oil and the sev will not be crisp.If the dough is too hard then the sev will be hard too.
To make long strands of the sev, press the batter slowly but hard on the ladle and not too fast.