Black and White Wednesday and Vada Pav~~ A Blog Hop #8

For Today's Blog Hop, a fantastic way to make new friends, which happens to be Radhika's brain child I was paired with Rinku Naveen ,of Rinku’s Kitchen. Do visit her for delicious dishes especially recipes from Kerala. I have bookmarked quite a few from this wonderful Blog.

After Diwali and the sweets that we (read I) had eaten I wanted to make something savoury but something deep fried in continuation with the festive season. Deep frying in my place is some kind of a rarity because being asthmatic I suffer a lot after frying.

What better than Vada Pav. Filling and delicious street food made home and as kiddo said Indian Burger an explanation she gave her friend and exactly as Rinku has described.

Thanks Rinku for your delicious recipe though I made changes to your recipe. I served them as Batata Wada to some of my guests on Sunday. I must say that for the first time my batter has stayed on the vadas and not lying around in the bottom of my pan. The best compliments I received were for these Vadas.

Visit Rinku for her recipe here. Since I had guests visiting I made a huge batch. Please scale it down when you make your vada pav.

Here is my version.

Ingredients for the bhaji
1 kg potatoes (6 huge ones)

6 big onions (or 7 medium ones)

6 cloves garlic

3 stalks of coriander

2-3 green chillies (adjust as per taste)

Oil

Mustard

1 teaspoon coriander powder

2 teaspoon jeera/cumin seeds/jeerigi powder

Haldi/turmeric

1 teaspoon red chilli powder (optional)

For the batter

1 cup besan/kadli hit/chana daal atta/chickpea flour

½ cup rice flour (I did not have rice flour hence used Maida)

3 tablespoon cornflour

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

½ teaspoon red chilli powder

1 /2 teaspoon soda

Salt

Water

Oil for frying

For the red chutney

¼ cup peanuts, roasted

¼ cup dry coconut or copra, roasted

5 cloves garlic

1 stalk coriander

1 ½ teaspoon Red chilli powder (adjust as per taste)

Salt

For the green chutney visit here.

Method:

For the red chutney

1. In the microwave just heat the ingredients except the red chilli powder and salt for 1 minute. Cool and grind to a powder. Since my mixer cannot accept small helpings I made it in the above batch and then in a small quantity say about ⅛ the total quantity added ½ cup water and made a paste. (The reason for dry coconut is that peanuts give us acidity. You can make the entire batch with peanuts). This is for you to get an idea of what I did.Since the pics are all taken at night ....

2. Put all the ingredients for the green chutney together and don’t grind it till the last possible moment for it to retain the lovely green colour.

Now for the vegetable for the vada

1. In the cooker cook the potatoes for 3-4 whistles. Cool and mash.

2. Grind 1 onion, garlic, green chilli and the coriander to a coarse paste.

3. Heat oil in a kadhai/wok. Add the mustard. When the mustard splutters add the ground onion garlic paste and fry till the raw smell goes away.

4. As the paste is frying chop the rest of the onions fine and add to the kadhai and fry till translucent.

5. Add the turmeric, coriander and jeera powder. Stir.

6. Add the mashed potatoes and salt.

7. Stir till well mixed and cook well covered for about 5 minutes.

8. Open the lid and cool.

9. Make small balls and keep aside. To make Vada pav it will be a better idea to make them flat but with guest about to arrive I did not stop to think.

For the batter

1. Mix all the ingredients with very little water and make a thick batter. The batter is sticky but do not worry this is the way it should be.

2. Heat oil for frying. When it is hot add about 2 tblspn full to the batter. If your oil is hot enough the batter sizzles. Wait for the oil to cool down a bit then mix well. This will make your vada coating crisp.

3. Drop the ball of the vada in the batter and coat it all around by rolling the ball in the batter. Slide the ball in the oil carefully. Remember burns are very painful.

4. Fry till golden brown on all sides. Remove with a slotted spoon on a paper towel.

5. To my guest we served them hot with the green chutney only,(I just did not have the time to make the red one).

To assemble

1. The authentic way to make these up would be slit the pav open. Apply the chutneys and place vada all flattened out inside the pav and serve.But when we ate I was too tired to make them in flat patties, also there were quite a few lying around so we pressed these in to flat patties. On Sunday we ate them with tomato sauce as red chutney.

This we did, as I said on Sunday, there was quite a batch of bhaji left just enough for today’s dinner so I mixed the besan about ½ cup in the vegetable made flat balls and shallow fried them. I made the red chutney today a Tuesday since I have to post this today, Wednesday.