Fun Nostalgic Street Food of India: Instant Chana Dal and Savory Mixes Snack.

After eating tons of sweets dung this  Christmas season at work and at home and making  Tiramisu (recipe on this blog) about 4 times in December,  my palate was really craving for something savory and spicy.  Did not want to slave over the stove and wanted to make something quick to satisfy this urge.  Suddenly I remembered from my early childhood years, when we used to take  the train in India  from one city to another, the local street vendors would get on the train with their basket of variety of Indian savory snacks like fried Dal, Sev, roasted peanuts, and  chopped onions, tomatoes, diced hot chilies and fresh lime.  They would  sell this snack mix, they would mix all the ingredients in a bowl and give  it for us in the cone made out of news paper or a bowl made out of dried bunion trees leaves.  Even though I am not crazy about the dry fried Indian snack, but my husband is, so I do buy it once in a while from Indian grocer. So I pulled out all the ready made snacks from the pantry that I had bought from our local Indian grocer.  I happened to have some pomegranate and ripe pineapple. 

I decided to core the pineapple and made pineapple Jalapeno cilantro margaritas and filled the cored pineapple with margaritas to accompany with my savory snack.   BTW, This   post is NOT about Margaritas. Here is the recipe for the Fun Nostalgic Street Food of India: Instant Chana Dal and Savory Mixes Snack. You don't need any specific measurements of ingredients, just hand full of this and handful of that and mix everything based of what your palate craves for. 

So here is what I used: 

• One cup of fried chana dal (split garbanzo beans)
• One cup of sev ( noodles made out of Chick peas/garbanzo bean flour)
• 1/2 cup of roasted salted peanuts
•  One cup of any snack mix ( I used Andhra sev mix)

 

• One small red onion finely chopped
• One half yellow onion finely chopped
  
• One Roma tomato chopped
• 2  Serrano chilies finely chopped 
• 1/2  teaspoon of cayenne pepper powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of coarsely ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon of Sriracha seasoning mix 
• 1/2 teaspoon of cumin powder
• Salt to taste

•  1/2 teaspoon of Ancho chili seasoning (optional)
• 1/4 cup of chopped cilantro
  
• 1/4 cup of pomegranates seeds  
• 1 fresh juicy lime

There is no hard and fast rules about he ingredients you can even used drained chick peas from can, crushed pita chips or any snack.

  

 

 

 

Method: 

•   Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
•   Add all the chopped onions, chili pepper  and           tomatoes.
•   Add all the dry spices. Mix well.
•   Squeeze the fresh lime juice on the mix.
•   Garnish with chopped cilantro and pomegranate and some  more dry Sev if desired. 
•   Serve immediately so does not become soggy.
•   Serve with your favorite drinks/soft drink or juice.

Enjoy !! 

Recipe and Photographs by Surekha.

Read More »