It's a half-moon day

Crisp and flaky kanavlas with a sweet coconut, dry fruit and nut filling. Photos: Sai Raje

A few days ago, I was watching a food show on television, which had its host chomping on some sweet pastries in Mexico. The pastries caught my eye because they looked remarkably similar to the festive, half-moon shaped karanjis or kanavlas made at home during Diwali. My family’s homemade kanavla usually has a sweet coconut, dryfruit and nut filling. We also enjoy a finger-licking, savoury version that is filled with spiced, mutton kheema. 

The Mexican half-moon pastry described earlier, is called the empanada, and is both sweet and savoury as well. It is made by employing an almost identical process as the kanavla. Roll out specially made pastry dough into circles, add the filling, roll over the pastry and seal the filling inside, and finally, bake or fry the pastries. When made well, the pastry outside is crisp, light and quite flaky, which goes well with a flavoursome filling, both sweet and savoury.

The food geek in me was curious to find out if there were versions of this half-moon pastry in other cultures. So I consulted my dependable Larousse Gastronomique, and found several forms of this delectable treat. 

The Cornish pasty from Cornwall, Britain is probably the most popular of its kind. It’s a large baked pastry encasing a seasoned beef, potato and onion filling.

In Southern Italy, especially Sicily, this pastry takes the form of an Easter special called cassatedde, and is filled with sweet ricotta cheese, lemon or orange zest, and candied fruit and nuts. Israel has a savoury version called the boureka that is filled with cheese and potatoes. 

While the half-moon pastry is fashioned in a similar manner by several cultures, the method of making the pastry dough itself differs greatly. While some half-moon recipes call for buttery shortcrust pastry, others depend on yeasted dough. With Marathi kanavlas, making dough with gritty semolina is key. Fine flour just won’t do. Layering the dough with butter is also necessary to make a kanavla with a crisp, flaky exterior, much like puff pastry.

For my first effort, I enlisted the help of my mother, who not only provided me with the family recipe, but demonstrated it step by step too. 

Kanavla 

Pronounced ka-nuv-laa

Makes 10 

Ingredients

Pastry dough:

100 gm fine semolina or rava 

Pinch of crushed saffron

50 gm ghee

Cornflour

Filling:

100 gm desiccated dry coconut

100 gm superfine sugar

5-6 cardamom pods, crushed

Large pinch nutmeg

2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon ghee

Method

1. Add a pinch of salt, crushed saffron to the semolina. Mix in a little water, a few drops at a time and lightly mix semolina into stiff dough. Cover and set aside for 3 hours.

2. Sauté the coconut in a pan on low heat for 3 to 4 minutes, blitz in a mixer-grinder until fine, and set aside. Sauté the whole-wheat flour with a teaspoon of ghee on a low heat for 3 to 4 minutes. Mix the coconut, flour, sugar, crushed cardamom, nutmeg and set the filling aside.

3. Lightly beat 50 gm of ghee in a bowl until pale and smooth. Add cornflour, bit by bit, until the mixture resembles soft, white butter. 

4. Blitz semolina dough in a mixer-grinder for a minute or two, until soft and stretchy. Divide dough into three parts.

5. Roll out each of the three parts into thin discs. 

6. Spread the ghee-cornflour paste onto a disc; layer all discs in this manner.

7. Crimp up the sides, and roll into a cylindrical shape.

8. Cut lengthwise, and cut into 2-inch wide pieces. You will now notice several layers of buttered dough in each of the pieces.

9. Take a piece and roll out into a disc very gently with a rolling pin. Heap 2 teaspoons of the filling to the disc's centre.

10. Cover over and seal the edges.

11. Keep all the kanavlas covered under a clean, damp cloth. 

Deep fry the pastries in ghee on low heat, and eat a couple of them when warm!