Kapaati’s Pepper Thenguzhal (chakri)

This is first of the 3 recipes that I will post in the next couple days – making up for the week long hiatus I had to take on account of Navarathri. My mother in law was visiting during this time and it seemed a nice way to keep occupied. I named this Kapaati recipe after her – since that’s how my children refer to her. I want to take credit though for the pepper part of it – I asked her to add it – Not a conventional thing to do to thenguzhal.

The ingredients are:
4 parts Rice flour
1 part urad flour
2 teaspoons of finely ground pepper powder
1/2 teaspoon of asafoetida
2 tsps of white sesame seeds
1 tablespoons of ghee
1-1/2 to 2 cups of water
salt

Preparing the dough
Sift both flours and drymic all ingredients into the flour mix – Slowly add the water to make dough, soft, but firm – The second cup of water is when you should start using caution.

You need: The Murukku press -with the disc that contains one starry hole – pictured below.

First get a piece of wax paper and spread it on your counter – you re fgoing to squeeze the theguzhal from the press on the wax paper. Spray the insides of the press with oil so that the ride out the disc hole will be smooth for the batter. This was a cinch, contrary to my fears! The number of thenguzhals you get depends on the number of circles made- I made a 5 circle ones and the batter yielded about 40 thenguzhals.

For frying
Pan with either corn oil or sunflower oil or sesame oil – your choice. I used corn oil.
Pictures are self explanatory.

For some reason the pictures did not load in the right order, but you get the drift, I hope.