We have our breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we have our snacks. A faithful companion of tea, the importance of snacks in India is not confined to what we eat. But, the significance of snacking lies in its ability to provide a reason for the families and friends to gather, and hence conversation flows and many forgotten memories reappear.
The combination of conversation and snacking are so important, that a special term called ‘adda’ is particularly dedicated to indicate the emotion and action. It starts with a quite sip of tea and an innocent remark, that gradually leads to thread of discussions, followed by valuable opinions, and arguments and counter arguments. And all of these are able to sustain, only with the aid of unavoidable and irresistible spread of snacks, providing essential fuel to prolong the flow of conversation. So, being it kachori or samosa, chop or cutlet, fritters or nimki, we Indians do not know how to continue a discussion, without moving our mouth towards managing a flavourful bite, or working our brain towards grabbing the biggest piece from the plate 🧐. In-fact, one would not be completely mistaken, for bestowing credit to these addas leading to invention, discovery and innovation of lot of delicious and mouth-watering snacks, quietly adding the charm of the adda and flavour of the tea.
And one such age-old snack, which has been addressing to the requirement of snacking during teatime with its humble ingredients, is our own Chire Bhaja (Fried Flattened Rice). Confined to the walls of household kitchen till recent past, and slowly finding its way to neighbourhood stores, this Chire Bhaja is basically made of fried flattened rice combined with peanuts, red cillies, papad and anything that adds flavour to the dish. Containing the goodness of flattened rice, this dish once made can be stored and can be taken anytime, whenever the desire of munching overcomes your senses and can only be brought to control with none other than munching.
Using the easily available ingredients from kitchen pantry and technically requiring no preparation, this humble and thoughtful Chire Bhaja, needs no second thought to cook and eat. A crispy companion to your evening tea and a smart keep for our sudden hunger pangs, once introduced, you will hardly find any reluctant taker for this appetizing snack. And what more! With the freedom to tweak ingredients as per your taste, this dish deserves a try.
Here is your chance to create your own Chire Bhaja.
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Recipe: Chire Bhaja or Crispy Fried Flattened Rice
Preparation Time: 5 minutes Cooking Time: 33 minutes Equipment used: A pan, a deep fry strainer, a vessel to mix the fried ingredients Yields: 5 big bowls
Ingredients:
- 1 cup refined oil
- 1 cup flattened rice or poha
- 3 papad or papadum
- 1 red chilli broken into halves
- ¼ cup curry leaves
- 2/3 cup peanuts
- 1 teaspoon rock salt
Method:
- Keep all the ingredients ready
- Heat a pan
- Add oil into the pan and heat the same
- Fry the flattened rice in batches, by frying ½ cup at a time, and take them out from the pan at once, before they start turning brown
- Transfer the fried flattened rice to a big plate or a big vessel
- Fry the papads in the same oil and remove them from the pan to the vessel with fried flattened rice
- Add red chilli and curry leaves to the hot oil and fry them
- Remove red chilli and curry leaves from the pan and add them to the fried papad and flattened rice vessel
- Now fry the peanuts till they turn little dark and shift them to the vessel with other ingredients
- Crush the fried papad
- Add salt and mix the ingredients with hand or spoon to acquire a proper mixture
Heat a pan.
Followed by heating oil.
Fry the flattened rice in batches.
Break the papad into 1/2 or 1/4 and fry them.
Fry red chilli and curry leaves.
Fry the peanuts.
Crush papad.
Add salt.
Mix the ingredients properly.
Tips:
- Keeping all the ingredients ready at the start is the most important part, as seconds delay may lead to burning of ingredients
- To check if the oil is sufficiently hot, put one grain of flattened rice into the pan. If the oil is hot, the grain of flattened rice will puff up
- The moment one batch of ingredient is fried and removed from the pan; the other batch of ingredients need to be added to the pan
- After heating the oil, fry everything on sim to avoid burning of ingredients
- Break the papad into half or one fourth and fry them, so that you don’t have to add more oil into the pan
- You can store the leftover oil for future use
- For more flavour and taste, add chopped onion while having the snack
