Day before yesterday, my mom had this sudden idea to make pani puri, since we had all the ingredients at home. Now, for those of you who don't know what pani puri is,it is an extremely common and famous Indian street food. I think in English it is called Indian water pancake.
It is a snack type dish where you have round, small, crispy puris (golgappa). You make a small opening with your thumb finger and add a little bit of stuffing( which is mainly made of mashed potato and spices to give a good varied flavour. Along with that, you are given the pani(flavoured water) which you pour inside the puri or fill the puri with. And you eat the entire puri in one single bite, so that you get all the different kind of flavours in one go. The pani comes with different flavours like sweet, chilli, mild etc. The most common pani flavour is the green spicy pani. and also the sweet chilli red pani.
So getting back to my story...
In the evening around 6 or 7pm, my mom started with the pani puri preparation. The potato filling was already prepared before hand(my mom had made it for making other dishes) so all we needed to make was the pani and the puri. I saw how my mom took a bowl of water and then added some masala into it(maybe it was the ready made pani puri masala) and then she mixed them with a big, extra curved spoon. My sister wanted to help with the mixing, so she got along with the process too.
Now was the time to make the purisss.
These puris are fried. My mom heated the oil in a container on the stove, to start making the puris. We had already bought ready to cook puris, so all we had to do was just fry them. I watched carefully how my mother put 3-3 puris at a time, then the puris would start puffing and finally get the perfect round shape. My mom would then use the oil strainer type spoon to take out the golgappa. She would drain out all the extra oil from the puris by moving the spoon upwards and downwards multiple times. She would then finally put the puris in a bowl/plate covered with tissue paper, so that the tissue could absorb the extra remaining oil. I made a few puris by myself too, by following the same procedure.
Then we waited for 5 minutes so that the puris could cool down(remember its very important to let the puris come to room temperature, if the are hot and just freshly made, if you don't do so then you will not be able to break the puris properly and the puris might be soft and soggy and not crispy, which might ruin the taste of the entire dish) and after that my family and I played a movie and ate pani puris. It was a wonderful evening. I made each of my puris in my very own unique way and that flavourful taste in every single bite was heavenly.
I would 100% recommend everyone to try pani puris if they haven't tried it yet. If you are living in India, then it is a must for you to try it and if you're not, then try making homemade pani puris just like how I did. Believe me it's WORTH IT.
Image from https://pixabay.com/images/search/pani%20puri/