Chivda 

We have been eating a fair amount of chivda, also called ​mixture​. You can adjust it to be sweet,
salty, savory, spicy, or all of them at once.

Poha chivda is a snack food of Indian origin that you might find in your corner grocery in
packets. It is similar to something sometimes labeled Bombay Mix​1​ The fried stuff in the packets
is usually too oily and too salty and
too expensive to snack on every
day. This adaptation, with
unsweetened corn flakes and
without frying, is economical.

Here's my recipe. You want

unsweetened​ cornflakes for this
recipe, but you can use any
unsweetened flake cereal. You can
find unsweetened flakes in many
markets, but not all. I haven’t tried it
with sweetened flake cereal, but it
should work — just don’t add any
sugar elsewhere.

Set your oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Put a small handful of small ​lentils​ in a large frying pan that can go in the oven. Urad dal is my
favorite, but split red lentils are prettier.

Roast the lentils / dal over medium-high heat on the stove till crunchy, about 2min. Try one; it
should crunch. Pour into a bowl.

In the same hot pan, put a spoonful of ​mustard​ seed, a spoonful of ​coriander​ (cilantro seed), a
half spoonful of whole ​cumin​, a half spoonful of b
​ lack pepper​, and a half spoonful of coarse
salt​. Roast until the seeds start to pop and brown, no further. Pour into the bowl.

Now, put into the hot pan a handful of seeds or nuts: ​pumpkin seeds​ are great, ​cashews​ work
well, and ​peanuts​ are traditional for chivda. Keep shaking, and add a big spoonful of ​brown
sugar​. (White sugar works great, too. If you have more-raw sugar like jaggery or rapadura to
hand, try that.) Shake or stir as the sugar melts and covers the nuts. Pour into the bowl.

1
This name was clearly taken from the handwritten label on a cassette tape made by a backpacker from
Melbourne in 1983.
Add to the bowl ground spices. I recommend ​fenugreek​, a pinch of ​asafoetida​, a part-spoonful
of a mild ​chilli​ powder like piment d'Espelette. If you have ​curry leaves​, add them. Adjust
according to your spice box.

In the pan, melt two spoonsful of ​ghee​, c

​ oconut oil, or butter​. All of these work great; probably
any oil works well.

Put in the pan two bowls full of ​unsweetened corn flakes​ — as much as fits in the pan. You
can also try with sweetened flakes, but eliminate sugar from the recipe.​2​ Here is the divergence
from the chivda tradition, which would use rice poha — steamed, flattened rice. Stir the flakes
so they are coated with the oil. Cover the flakes with the salty-sweet mixture from the bowl.

Toast the mixture in the hot oven for a few minutes — about 10min in my oven. You'll see the
corn flakes puff up and crisp. Stir a couple times while roasting for even browning and puffing.
The flakes will absorb the oil in this process. If the end product feels oily, try using less fat next
time.

We serve the chivda in a bowl or tub with a big soup spoon, so you can scoop out chivda into
your hand.

2
I have never tried this. It might work well.