South Indian mixture with a healthy twist.

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Mixture is a term commonly used in south Indian cuisine with reference to a mixture made out of a variety of deep fried fritters made of chick pea flour in various shapes. These deep fried fritters are mixed together with fried peanuts, raisins and flavored with salt and spices to make the most delicious and crunchy snack. In the past I had adapted chivda  (a snack from Maharashtra) and given it my own spin with the use of rice krispies. Similarly I have been trying to duplicate the taste of the south Indian mixture using more healthy ingredients and without the frying of course :-) 

I tried it with a variety of ingredients and this has been the closest I have come to the taste of the original mixture. The major difference between my past attempts and this one was that this time both the cereals I used were not very sweet making it easier to blend with this taste, additionally I crushed the cereal slightly which helped a great deal too.The other thing I have noticed is that dry roasting the red chillies and curry leaves and grinding it makes a huge difference to the taste, using red chilli powder does not have the same impact. So if you plan to try this, do try not to skip this one step, trust me it makes a lot of difference to the final taste.So what are you waiting for, go ahead and give this one a try and enjoy it with a nice hot cuppa tea :-)

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Ingredients and Method to make the Healthy south Indian mixture

1 cup golden flax cereal (uncrushed) loosely packed ( I got this at Trader Joe)

3 cups organic corn flakes (uncrushed) loosely packed( I got this at Trader Joe)

3/4 cup dry roasted peanuts

1/2 cup roasted chick peas (pottu kadalai/dalia)

1/2 cup raisin

2 tbsp corn oil (or any other oil)

3 red chillies

6 curry leaves

1/8 tsp asafoetida (hing)

salt to taste

Dry roast red chillies and curry leaves for a few minutes until the chillies start turning darker and the curry leaves look a little dried out. Keep aside to cool.

In a large bowl add the flax cereal and roughly crush it up into smaller pieces. I used the bottom part of a small bowl and used that to press the flax cereal until it broke into little bits.

Keep the flax cereal aside and in the same bowl repeat the process with the corn flakes. Mix together the corn flakes and flax cereal.

Grind the red chillies and the curry leaves in a spice grinder. Add to this, salt and asafoetida and give it a another spin in the spice grinder. Keep aside.

Heat oil in a large heavy bottomed pan, add peanuts, roasted chick peas and raisins to this and saute for a few seconds.

Add the cereal mixture and the ground spice mixture and mix well.

Cool thoroughly and store in an airtight container.

Notes

In case you want you can use any other plain unflavored cereal which is not sweet in place of the cereal I have used.

Additionally you can add some dry roasted cashew nuts too along with peanuts