Deep Fried Love: RataLyachya Gharya

This post by Vaishali reminded me of 'RataLyachya Gharya' my grandma used to make very often. My mom would tell us stories of her childhood, the food she ate and helped her mom make. These puris made with sweet potatoes was one the things she always mentioned. Just before my previous visit to India, I was thinking about things that I wanted to eat in India. I casually mentioned it to my mom that I wanted to eat gharis. And as all moms would do for the kids, she had the dabba full of gharis ready the moment I entered home. These reminded me of my childhood. My grandma used to live in the same town and she would send us anything special she made. And these gharya were staple in their household. Mummy rarely made them as she would always get it from her mom. We would get one each as a snack after we come back from school. Soft (In Marathi we call it लुसलुशित) and dripping with oil :). Unfortunately they absorb so much much oil that I hesitate to make them. But recently I made them on Mother's day as a tribute to my grandma. The recipe is from my mom and its same as grandma's.

Deep Fried Gharya/Gharage

You will need -

Sweet Potatoes *

Grated Jaggery

Wheat Flour

Rice Flour

3-4 Cardamom Pods

1 tsp Ginger Powder

Oil for deep frying

Procedure -

Wash the sweet potatoes. Bake then either in microwave or in oven until soft.

Discard all the skin and mash the sweet potatoes removing all the lumps.

Now measure the pulp. You will need equal measure of grated jaggery (If you have 1 cup of pulp, you will need 1 cup off jaggery).

Pound cardamom seeds with mortar and pestle. Add cardamom powder, ginger powder, jaggery and mashed sweet potatoes together. Make sure there are no big chunks of jaggery.

Let it sit for at least half an hour.

Now mix with hands and add wheat flour and rice flour little bit at a time. Dough should be bit softer than chapati dough.

Heat oil in deep kadhai. Take a small golf size ball of dough . Carefully spread the dough ball to make a puri on a small sheet of plastic or aluminum foil using bit of oil. These puris are thicker than the normal puris we make. Gently remove it from foil fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Remove it and let it sit on paper towel sheet to cool down and to absorb excess oil.

These stay good for at least 8 days.

Tips -

Pan Fried Gharya

• Shallow frying - If you are like me who do not like to deep fry, you can roast them on non stick pan like chapati/paratha. These also taste good and you feel less guilty eating them.
• 1/2 cup of mashed sweet potatoes yield about 10 puris/gharya.
• You can use only wheat flour if you dont want to use rice flour.
• You can use Yams as well but they then to be less sweet than one with sweet potatoes but the color comes out very bright and nice orange.