Lilva Kachori
Lilva Kachori/Ghughra is a delicious Gujarati tea time snack to enjoy with cilantro or tamarind chutney. The flaky dough is filled with pigeon peas and few spices, sugar gives that slight sweetness and lemon balances out everything. This is everything in a snack you would want.
Servings: 6
Ingredients
Dough
- 2 cups Flour You can use either All purpose flour or whole wheat, or mix of both
- 3-4 tablespoons Ghee/Cold Unsalted butter
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1/3 cup ice cold water
Filling
- 1 cup Fresh/frozen green pigeon peas
- 1 cup Fresh/frozen Peas
- 2 tablespoons Oil
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 2 Cloves of garlic
- 2 tsp Green chili paste
- 1 tsp Ginger paste
- 2 tbsp Cashew nuts
- 2 tbsp Sultanas
- 1 tbsp Sesame seeds
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 2 tsp Garam Masala use to your preference
- ½ tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tsp Sugar
- 1 tbsp Lemon juice
- Salt to taste
- ¼ cup freshly Grated coconut
- 2 tbsp Pomegranate Seeds (optional)
- ¼ cup fresh cilantro
- Oil for frying
Instructions
Dough
- Take the all the ingredients for the dough, and pulse it in breaks in a food processor to mix the ghee or butter until you see pea sized crumbles. If you are making it by hand, make sure to rub the flour and ghee with hands until same pea-sized crumbs form. Just the way we do for making pie crust. Gradually add water and try to from a stiff dough. Dough should not be very soft or very stiff, that it becomes difficult to roll out. You might need more or less water. Let it rest at room temperature until you make the filling.
Filling
- Take the pigeon peas, green peas and pulse it coarsely in your food processor. Leave it coarse. Do not overdo it.
- Heat a pan on medium add oil, on medium heat, as it heats up, add cumin seeds, let them splutter, add garlic, green chili, ginger paste followed by cashews, sultanas, fennel and sesame seeds, stir every once a while and in few seconds add the spices and salt , sugar. Add in the peas mixture. Mix everything well.
- Let the mixture get cooked for about 5 to 7 minutes and saute it well. In few minutes the mixture will be cooked, basically the rawness should go away. Turn off the heat and add in the lemon juice, stir in shredded coconut, pomegranate seeds and cilantro. Let it cool down.
Assembly/ Frying
- Divide the dough into equal parts. Roll out the dough into 5-6-inch circles and approximately 1/2 inch thick. You can roll out big circle and then using a round cutter, cut out small circles. (See notes)
- Spoon the filling about 1 tbsp on each of these circles, leaving the sides open for folding and fold it in half moon/circle and press the edges to seal with your fingers or using a fork. If you want to crimp the edges with fingers, do it. Make sure they are sealed properly.
- Once all are folded and shaped. Fry them.
- Heat some oil to fry. Once the oil reaches the frying temperature around 350F. Drop them one by one, carefully and fry them on both sides until they are light brownish in color. Remove them on absorbent paper.
- Serve them hot/warm with cilantro, tamarind or mango chutney with side of green chilies.
Notes
- Do not knead the dough too much. Dough should be stiff not soft. Stiff enough that you can roll it out.
- You can roll out into individual small circles or roll a big circle of dough and cut smaller circles with a round cutter. I used a pasta maker to roll out the dough, used small round cutter to cut out circles and so that each one of them come out same in size.
- You can freeze the filled kachoris into the freezer in an airtight container or a zip lock bag for later use. Just thaw them for 10 minutes and fry them.
- You can adjust the spices according to your preference.
- You can also use fresh green chickpeas.
- If you are not making these with fresh pigeon peas, then frozen is available at Indian grocery stores.