Nankhatais ,Ovenfresh Cookies on the Cart

Baking cookies can't get simpler than this!

Nankhatais of Delhi,baked on the spot

Nankhatais, the soft,  yet crunchy, fluffy, buttery and sweet desi version of the simple cookie , are something that I’ve eaten  periodically since Chandigarh became my home way back. 

We used to buy them from the old Capital Bakery , one in Sector 8 and another in Sector 10, they had nothing to do with each other. Later when Sindhi Sweets opened shop it became “asli gheewale
 nankhatai”— full of pure ghee and loaded with calories and cholesterol. 

The implication is that till they began making it, the bakeries used, not butter, but vegetable fat—the best known brand being Dalda.

Innovative "oven"

I saw a different version, made and served on the spot, long before Cookie Man from Australia entered the malls of an India going global beginning in the new millennium.

The nankhatais were made in bakery-on-the-wheels--on carts with cycle wheels. The oven comprised an old tyre complete with rim and hub cap, and the cylindrical tin, never more than a foot high, and about eight inches in diameter. 

Using a few charcoal bits placed in the centre of the rim, as fuel, and an inverted hubcap for girdle(tawa), the scoops of the dough turn golden as the cylindrical part of an old Dalda tin, maintains the temperature. 

These  old Dalda tins are hardly to be seen, and  have become a collector’s item these days !

These nankhataiwalas are aplenty in the old parts of Delhi. I am told their counterparts are to be seen at traditional fairs in Uttar Pradesh as well.

The other day, I saw one boy selling the oven-fresh  cookie that is our very own, at Sadar Bazar area of New Delhi. His  “masala”—as he called the dough of a bit of semolina, lots of allpurpose flour, sugar and ghee, plus any secret ingrendient they may be using—was over, so he had put away the “oven”.

Long live  Delhi’s oven fresh cookies !

Nankhatais