Krishna Janmashttami heralds the beginning of festival season with mouth watering offerings to the Lord. Ribbon pakoda or nada pakoda as it is popularly called is one of the many tasty offerings.

This is a popular crunchy made during Janmashtami.

It is very simple and easy too.

Ingredients :

4 cups rice flour ( good fresh store bought is enough)

2 cups besan/gram flour

1/2 tsp asafoetida powder

salt to taste

1 1/2 tsp chilli powder ( adjust as you like)

2 tbsp hot melted ghee or fresh butter at room temp. Even hot oil is sufficient. Butter tastes best!

1 tsp of white sesame seeds

oil for deep frying

Method

Sieve the flours , add all the dry ingredients and then the hot melted ghee/ hot oil or butter.

Before proceeding to make the soft dough, mix all the ingredients with hand so that the oil/butter /ghee will coat the flours well and yo will, get a nice crumbly texture.

Then add little water at a time till you get a nice soft dough. Dont make it too soft or too tight a dough.

You should be able to pinch off smooth firm balls to put in the ribbon pakoda maker.called the murruku press which has several designed plates inside. Choose the one with two slits used to make ribbon pakodas.

Take the Pakoda maker,( Murruku press ) keep the slitted plate inside, grease if necessary and drop a small ball of the dough.

Meanwhile the oil should be kept for heating, test by dropping a small bit of the dough., it should come up sizzling which means the oil is ready.

You can prepare the nada pakoda straight into the hot oil in a circular way or any manner as it really doesnt matter.

Let the flame be kept on medium heat and turn the pakodas over to cook well on all sides.

When you see them firming up and looking brown, the oil would have stopped sizzling , take them out and when cool check then for taste and crunch.

The beauty of this recipe is you can make adjustments even after the dough has been prepared.So keep aside some flour ready for adding if need be though it may not be necessary.

It is always a good idea to start with small batch like 2 cups and proportionate recipe. so that mistakes can be corrected but you cannot make mistakes with this recipe as it is perfected and tried many times over.

Below are three youtube videos of ribbon pakoda with small changes, do c heck them out , all are delicious .