Aval Vadai / Poha vada

My mom in law watched this recipe in a TV channel and asked me to try and post in the blog.

Usual paruppu vadai is made with Chenna dal. This vadai is aval  + Chenna dal.

Simple and crunchy vadai.

Ingredients:

·         Chenna Dal / Kadala Paruppu – ½ cup

·         Poha / Aval – ½ cup (Thick red variety)

·         Ginger – 1 inch piece

·         Garlic – 3 pods – finely chopped.

·         Onion – 1 small size - finely chopped

·         Curry leaves + coriander leaves – fistful

·         Fennel Seeds  / Sombu– 1 tsp

·         Red chilies – 2

·         Green chili – 2 (Change according to ur taste)

·         Asafetida – ¼ tsp

·         Salt to taste

·         Oil for deep frying.

Method:

Soak Chennai dal and poha separately for half an hour.

After half an hour , drain the water completely from Chenna dal, add ginger, curry leaves, coriander leaves, green chili, red chili and grind to a coarse paste. Don’t add water while grinding, and don’t grind it smooth. Transfer the contents to a wide bowl.

Drain the water from poha and squeeze well to remove the excess water.

Add the poha to the dal mixture and add the chopped onion, garlic and fennel seeds.

Add salt and asotifida and mix well.

Make them 10 equal sized balls and make into patties.

Heat the oil in a pan. Once heated fry them well golden brown flipping the sides in 2 batches.

Serve hot with coffee / tea.

Masal Vadai

I had bought a pack of navarathan dal. It’s a mix of variety of dal. I thought of making a dal fry with that. But was thinking to try something different with it.

So tried making masal vadai with this.

I made spinach corn sandwich with palak for breakfast, I dint use the spinach stem for sandwich filling, instead I kept the stems in the fridge to use it for something else. My mil gave idea to use the stem for the vadai. Keera vada is usual, this is palak stem mixed dal vadai. 

Ingredients:

To grind:

·         Mix dal – 2 cups

·         Red chilies – 4 (If u want it spicy , add 2 more)

·         Ginger – 1 inch length piece

To chop:

·         Spinach stem – 1 cup nearly (I dint measure it, I added how much I had)

·         Onion – 1 big size

·         Curry leaves – 1 fistful

·         Coriander leaves – few strands

Other ingrediants:

·         Hing / Asofetida – ¼ tsp

·         Salt to taste

·         Oil to deep fry

Method:

Soak dal in water for 30 mins. Drain the water.

Add Red chilies and Ginger and grind into a coarse paste. Don’t add water while grinding. If its too hard to grind, sprinkle little water. It should look like below.

Roughly chop the palak stems

Add the chopped items to the ground dal.  Add Hing and salt and mix well.

If the mix is very loose, add a tbsp. of rice flour. It makes the vadai crispy too.

Heat the oil in a kadai.

Take a polythene sheet or banana leaf. Greese it with little oil. Dip ur fingers in water (not oil .. read carefully). Take little of dal mixture, round it to a small ball, flat it with the help of the polythene paper, drop it in the oil carefully. You can make 5 to 6 number in one slot based on the kadai size. 



Cook it in medium flame, flipping the sides. Cook it till it gets a reddish color outside. Once cook, take it out and drain the excess oil in tissue paper.

Serve it hot with any chutney.  I eat it just like that with my tea / Coffee.