Making Thattai & Remembering my Mother-in-Law

For the past 3 to 4 days, we have been in Deepavali prep mode ! First I got a couple of kilos of rice made into flour at a local flour mill. Then urad dal was dry roasted and ground into flour at home. These two are the main ingredients in making savouries – specifically I wanted to make Thattai, the equivalent of Mathri.

Thattai is basically a rice flour + urad dal crisp.

Grandmothers and Mother-in-Law Deepavali Prep

The reason I was remembering my mother-in-law was because she would make several batches of savouries and sweets just before Diwali all by herself. And there were no stores from which she could buy the rice flour or urad dal flour or anything for that matter :(. She also had to follow all the hygiene practices (“Aacharam”) prescribed.

In the days before Mixies and flour mills came into existence, everything had to be hand pounded and ground at home. My paternal grandmother had a “chakki” or mortar and pestle where she would grind the dal and rice to required consistency. In fact Amma has an iron vessel and a really heavy pestle to make hand pounded flour.

My fragile maternal grandmother, would make rice in a bronze pot that weighs 2 kgs just by itself. And imagine cooking rice on it and removing the starch every single day, and twice. No wonder our grandmothers got all the workout while cooking and cleaning.

Forget the brass pot, I have a bronze lamp that’s heavy enough to qualify as a weapon :):):).

So my mother-in-law would hand pound most of the stuff for nearly 20 years before some of the flour mills came by and reduced some of the work. I remembered her yesterday because I started making Thattai later in the evening. When I got married she told me that she would start making Diwali “bhakshanam” (sweets and savouries) at night after everyone had gone to sleep, because Krishnan and his brothers would not let her do these things in peace. 🙂

Soft Thattai

Amma and I made a batch of Thattai last night…. it’s two cups of rice flour lightly roasted, 3 TBSP of Urad dal flour (dry roasted urad dal, ground and sieved), salt and red chilli powder to taste, a TSP of roasted Bengal gram, two TBSPs of melted butter (my mistake).

I used butter instead of using hot oil and the Thattais turned out to be soft. Will make another batch today and rectify my error.

Deepavali Marundu

Amma just made the Deepavali Marundu. Do read about this “medicine” that’s made for every Deepavali. It helps the body to adjust to the changing weather and ofcourse improves your metabolism to digest all the sweets and other goodies that you would eat on Deepavali day.

Read all about it here – Reviving Deepavali Traditions: Making Marunthu at Home.

Now am onto my signature Kaju Katlis … see you all later. Happy Deepavali in advance folks.