Pumpkin thekuwa (sweet pumpkin fritters)

Sweet pumpkin fritters were born out of curiosity when I had too much ripe pumpkin at hand and was looking for options to use it. I found this recipe on youtube, the name was In Marathi which I can’t pronounce. This ancient Maharashtrian recipe became a great hit. 

Ingredients

Ripe pumpkin

Salt

Jaggery / sugar

Rice flour

Spoon of maida

Spoon of ghee

Spoon of saunf

Other spices to taste (cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, etc)

Oil for frying

Method

Grate the ripe pumpkin. I usually do 100-200 grams a day, any more than that yields too much.

Sprinkle some salt and leave the pumpkin be for some few minutes. The pumpkin will start shedding water.

Add saunf, spices, ghee, and jaggery/sugar into the grated pumpkins.

Do not add extra water, the pumpkin’s water is enough. 

Add rice flour and start kneading. Knead until you have a firm dough like chapatti. It takes quite a bit of flour. Do not add all flour at once, but gradually according to need as you knead.

When you are almost done, add the spoonful of maida in the end, to bind the dough together. 

Heat some oil in a pan.

Take the dough and make small balls. Flatten the balls by hand to make cookie sized pieces. I use a thekuwa mould,  to give interesting shapes, but you can just use your hand or a fork or some other such things to give interesting shapes. 

Fry the pieces in oil one by one until golden brown. Turn over and repeat. 

Enjoy with tea. 

P.S. Their is no name for this dish in Nepali, so I started calling it pumpkin thekuwa because it looks and tastes like thekuwa. When people don’t understand thekuwa I say pumpkin cookies. 

P.P. I saw other recipes on youtube where people used atta flour and Less jaggery and rolled out puris with the dough, haven’t tried it, but seems yummy.