Diwali Special - Shev/Sev

Happy Diwali

Happy diwali everyone! I hope this festival brings lots of joy and happiness for you and your loved ones.


My mom grew up in a huge joint family. They were 15-20 cousins growing up together. House was huge and and everyone had chores assigned to them. Boys would sweep yard and upstairs, fill the water. Girls would do the dish washing and laundry.  My grandma would cook with help of older girls. I think that was the norm back then to divide the work and finish off in time for school college. Once the kids went to school/college, grandma would prepare goodies for them to eat with evening tea. With so many people to feed, you can imagine the quantity she had to make. But she never compromised on quality. She made shankarpali, shev and chivda more often. Once in a while she made rava laddoos. All these are typical Maharashtrian Diwali snacks. Obviously my mom learned to cook from her mom and after her marriage from her mother in law. She got best of both worlds. My paternal grandma's chakalis and chirote were out of this world, that is what everyone who tasted them says. Unfortunately I dont remember much about her cooking. But I was fortunate enough to learn from my maternal grandma and my fathers aunts. Remembering all my grandmas, their signature dishes and trying to replicate them are my favorite Diwali memories.

The shev recipe I am going to share with you is one of the recipes my mom's. She combined her mom's recipe and one she got from my father's aunt. Its extremely easy to make and very tasty. I rarely deep fry stuff and this diwali I decided to make shev so that I dont forget the traditional diwali snacks.

Homemade Shev

Here is how I made it -

1/3 cup Water
4 tbsp Oil
1"x1" fresh Ginger Root
1/4 Lime/Lemon
Salt per taste
Red Chili Powder to taste
1 tsp finely ground Cumin powder
1 cup Fine Besan (chick pea flour) - may need couple more tablespoons
Pinch of Hing
Oil for deep frying

Preparation -
Take water in a small bowl. Grate ginger in water. Now squeeze lemon in the water bowl as well. Now sieve this water through a fine grade mesh. Squeeze out as much ginger juice as you can through the mesh.
Now add salt, chili powder, hing and finely ground cumin powder to the water.
Add 4tbsp oil in the water mix and whisk well for 3-4 minutes.
Now add this water to besan and make the dough/batter. If the batter is too watery then add couple of tablespoons more besan. Consistency should be ticker than idli or pakoda batter and way softer than chapati batter.
Adjust the seasoning if needed.
Mix the batter/dough with hand for 3-4 minutes. This makes the dough bit lighter.
Heat oil in stable pan on high heat. Oil should be piping hot.
Fill the dough in shev press and press shev in hot oil in circular shape.
Flip it once when one side is golden yellow.
Remove promptly from the oil once both sides as fried well. Let it drain on paper towel.
Repeat the process with remaining batter.
Cool the fried shev thoroughly before storing in airtight container.

Tips -

• I sift chili powder, besan and cumin powder through fine sieve before adding to water.
• Shev gets darker and tastes burnt if its fried longer. 
• I used byadagi chili powder so color looks reddish. 
• I dont put turmeric powder, but you can use it if you wish.