Thekua is the sweet Chhath is carried out with. Wheat flour is rubbed with ghee until it holds a shape, worked into a stiff dough with gur syrup and fennel and grated coconut, pressed into a carved wooden block so each piece comes out ridged on one face, and deep-fried slowly in ghee until it is hard rather than soft. Hardness is the design. It keeps for weeks without spoiling, which is why it goes into the daura — the bamboo basket carried on the head down to the river — and why it survives the arghya offered to the setting and the rising sun and the long wait between. The household makes it together in the early hours, in quantity, in a kadhai wide enough to take twenty at a time, and the smell of jaggery and hot ghee is what the festival smells like. It is not a delicate sweet and it is not trying to be.
INGREDIENTS
- 400 g wholemeal wheat flour (atta)
- 200 g block jaggery (gur, grated)
- 200 ml water
- 6 tbsp ghee (for rubbing in)
- 2 tsp fennel seeds (saunf, coarsely crushed)
- 6 green cardamom pods (seeds crushed)
- 50 g fresh or desiccated coconut (grated)
- 2 tbsp chopped cashews
- ghee (for deep frying)
METHOD
- Melt the jaggery in the water over low heat until fully dissolved, then strain it and let it cool to lukewarm. Do not use it hot.
- Rub the 6 tbsp ghee into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture holds its shape when squeezed in a fist.
- Mix in the fennel, cardamom, coconut and cashews.
- Add the jaggery syrup a little at a time and bring it together into a stiff dough. It should be firmer than a chapati dough and slightly crumbly; do not knead it smooth.
- Rest for 15 minutes.
- Take a walnut of dough, press it flat in your palm, then press it firmly into a carved wooden mould and knock it out. Failing that, flatten it and score the surface with a fork.
- Heat ghee in a deep pan to a low-moderate heat. Too hot and the outside darkens before the inside sets.
- Fry six or seven at a time for 12 to 15 minutes, turning, until deep brown and firm all the way through.
- Drain and cool completely on a rack. They harden as they cool.
- Store in an airtight tin. They keep for several weeks.
