Amazing sel roti   

10 July 2018, Tuesday

by Anita Bhattarai

Today Sabita didi made sel roti at school. Sel roti is one of the favorite sweets of the Nepali people. We love to eat sel roti! In Nepal, Tihar is one of the most important festivals and sel roti used to be especially made during this festival.

We were told we had to go to the kitchen so we could learn how to make sel roti. I and Utu brought our cameras and we sat around Sabita didi. Because sel is fried in very very hot boiling oil, we had to stay far far away from the stove because hot oil is very dangerous.

Our two year old Chuntu was happy because she had never seen sel roti being made before. Bhagwati and Palistha ma’ams took photos also and we got to look at Sabita didi as she did everything!

She had in front of her a steel pot with rice flour. This was the special Taichin rice that we had bought ourselves in Khokana. We thought we were going to eat khir with this rice but sel roti is also perfectly fine. Sabita didi had grinded the rice in the mixer and made a paste which ran nicely. She had added ghee butter and sugar. The sel roti ingredients cost more than Rs. 900 we learned. Wow! That is expensive!

The flour paste she gently scooped and took her hand right on top of the boiling oil. It was somewhat scary. Then she released a nice run of the almost liquid paste onto the hot oil making a circle. It looked so easy. She took two pieces of thin sticks and helped make sure that the sel was perfectly round.

Soon, there was a great pile of sel roti. Upon last count, within the hour, she had made 90 sel rotis! Sabita didi gave everybody little piece of sel roti to taste. Some were cream in color, some were red, and some were maroon, she had made sle roti according to the color and frying different people wanted.

We liked the sel roti very much and we came back in the class room still thinking about when Sabita didi would call us to east our snacks because that is when we would get to eat more sel roti. Sel was very delicious we love very very very much. Each sel roti cost us Rs. 20 to make after factoring in gas consumption and the time of the people involved!