Topic: Batata vada (street food)

[foureyes1941]

Here's a nice recipe for the wonderful potato vada you buy in the streets of India

5 potatoes boiled and coarsely mashed
curry leaves
8-10 cloves of garlic
1 big piece ginger
5 green chillies
coriander leaves
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 and 1/2 tablespoon oil
1 and 1/2 cup gram flour
turmeric powder
asafoetida
salt to taste
soda bicarbonate
1 tablespoon cornflour
1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder
Method:

For the filling -
- Grind all three aromatics (garlic, ginger and green chillies) together into a coarse paste.
- Heat 1 & 1/2 tbsp. oil in a pan. Add mustard seeds. Once they start spluttering, add asafoetida (heeng) and curry leaves. Add the ginger, chilli and garlic paste. Saute it for a minute.
- Add coarsely mashed potatoes and the remaining seasoning ingredients (turmeric powder, salt and coriander leaves). Mix well.
- Keep the potato filling aside and let it cool down completely.

For the batter -
- In a mixing bowl, add gram flour, 1 tbsp. cornflour, 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder, 1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder, 1/4 tsp. asafoetida or heeng and salt to taste. Add water and whisk it into a smooth pouring consistency batter.
Frying -
- Make 1 & 1/2 inch balls of potato filling.
- Just before frying, add 2 pinches of soda bicarbonate into the batter. Pour some hot oil over it and let it react and mix it together.
- Dip the potato balls well into the batter and add them to the hot oil.
- Fry them on a medium flame. Let them turn golden brown. Flip them well.
- Remove the ready vadas on a kitchen towel so that all the excess oil is absorbed.
- Serve them hot with coriander mint chutney and spicy garlic chutney

[Peripatetic Phil]

That looks my sort of ideal starter, 4e1941 -- I am a 100% carnivore until it comes to Indian food, and then I find that some of the vegetarian dishes are equal to any meat-containing dish and better than many.  Thank you for posting the recipe.

P.S. Possibly the same dish here, for those who speak Hindi or Urdu.

** Phil.

[Invisible Mike]

Yes nice looking recipe. I've screenshotted this for the future! Thanks