Time to share #4 from my 43 New-to-Me birthday challenge, Chat Pats Dilli-Style Papdi. I found it at an Indian grocery in town. The ingredients listed gram flour, flour, oil and salt. I didn't know what gram flour was, but I was intrigued, so I bought the package.
When I got home, I looked up gram flour and learned that it is made from chickpeas. Yum! Chickpeas (aka garbanzos), flour, oil and salt sounds pretty good! I was really looking forward to these crackers.
Alas, I did not like them. There were seeds throughout the crackers that I didn't like at all. They weren't listed amongst the ingredients, which is really irritating. It doesn't seem right to list only four ingredients when there clearly is at least one more major ingredient. Determined to identify the seeds, I used a knife to carefully scrape some out of the crackers in hopes of identifying them. Then I talked to an Indian friend of mine, Hemina, for help. She told me that "dilli-style" refers to the spices of the Delhi region. Unfortunately, that is not her region and thus not very familiar to her. After a bit of research, I've decided that the seeds were most likely ajwain (technically fruit pods, not seeds) or possibly cumin.
When I ate the mutilated cracker crumbs that didn't have any seeds (fruit pods?) in them, I really liked the chips. So thumbs up to gram flour, but thumbs down to the mystery seeds (fruit pods?). I rated them a 2 at first, but then reconsidered and bumped them up to a 4. I didn't hate them nearly enough to justify the 2, but I don't plan to buy them again (unless it's solely to unravel the mystery of the seeds (fruit pods?) that aren't listed in the ingredients.
Bummer!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is such a great way to try new foods AND to remember what they were. In this case, what never to buy again, lol
ReplyDeleteMy money is on cumin seeds, which I hate! ;) Here's a recipe which confirms my suspicion.... http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/papdi-recipe-fried-papdi-baked-papdi/ ;)
ReplyDeleteThe ajwain is in there too, though. I looked through a bunch of online recipes and they all seemed to have both. Perhaps the version I purchased did also. It's be nice if they actually listed that in the ingredients. Grr.
DeleteJust goes to show you... can't really trust the ingredients list on a package, right?! :)
DeleteAt least not on foreign-made products. They probably aren't as litigious as in the US.
DeleteWOW! I can't believe that they didn't list all of the ingredients. That is a real shame!!! I think gram flour sounds good though - my hubby would love it, I think!
ReplyDelete