Recipe for Keerai Vadai | Spinach & Herbs Masala Vadai

You'll find the South Indian vadais at two antipodes of the food spectrum - from crisp, light and a delight to bite into to a heavy, doughy mass and something you'd rather use to injure someone. The medu vadai / vada with its minimal ingredients is a tough one to get right. If you don't get it right, there's nothing much you can do, except may be dunk it into boiling hot rasam and pray to all the food goods that somehow the vadai gets a second chance to be counted as edible.

Then there's the more exciting paruppu vadai, that is made using split Bengal Gram dal - chana dal. When made for festivals and prasadam (offering in pujas etc.) it is made without the onion-garlic mix and other herbs, using just the soaked dal, asafoetida, chillies and salt. This one has huge scope for tasty improvisations, and it is reasonably easier to get right as compared to the medu vada. There are numerous variations, and keerai vadai with its plentiful greens is one of my favourites. There's also a Chettinad specialty called 'Vazhapoo vadai' which used the banana flower as an addition. The use of fennel seeds in this recipe gives it a lovely fragrance is a Chettinad touch. When one bites into this, the fennel is what makes your guests ask you, "what's this unusual flavour I'm getting?".




This recipe is from my househelp Krishnaveni, who is an excellent cook. Her layered parathas are divine, and I can't seem to like tea made by anyone else. While she doesn't do the general cooking on a daily basis, she is always happy to pitch in when I am cooking for a crowd.

Tambrahm Menu Thali

When it was my turn to host the bi-monthly Bloggers' lunch for #thekitchendivas, I drew out a Tambrahm menu, taking care to include items which my fellow bloggers might not have had before. This Keerai  (Spinach) vadai was one of them. Krishnaveni took responsibility for this, while I went about the rest of the cooking. They turned out absolutely delicious. The aromas of coriander, mint, curry leaves, fennel seeds meant they needed no accompanying chutney. She says that you can even add dill leaves as a replacement to one of the herbs listed here for an even more unusual flavour. And don't be shocked at the largish quantity of garlic, frying mellows their flavour considerably and it's not a strong garlicky taste at all.

Keerai Masala Vadai | Recipe for Spinach-Masala Vada
Makes around 35-40 small vadais

Equipment needed
Mixer to grind
Kadai to deep fry

Ingredients
250 gram chana dal
1/8 tsp asafoetida
1.5 tsp grated ginger
8 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed to a paste
1 large onion, finely chopped
2-3 green chillies, finely chopped
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 cup packed spinach leaves (washed, dried)- finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped coriander leaves
1/4 cup finely chopped mint
1 sprig curry leaves, finely chopped
1.5 tsp salt
1 pinch of baking soda
roughly 300 ml cooking oil, for deep frying (depends on size of your kadai)

Preparation
Wash and soak the chana dal in lots of water for 5-6 hours.
Drain well and grind to a coarse paste, without adding any extra water. 
Add all the remaining ingredients to the paste, mix well.
Keep the oil to heat in a deep heavy bottomed pan / kadai. 
Once the oil is hot, you can test by dropping in a small round of dal mix into the oil. It should immediately sizzle, go to the bottom of the kadai, and come straight up to the surface.
On a greased palm or a cling film, pat vadais of around 1.5" diameter and 1/2 inch thickness. As you form each vadai shape drop it along the sides into hot oil. 
Allow this to fry on medium heat, for around 4 minutes or so on one side. Once the bottom side turns golden and crisp, you can flip it around and similar fry this side for 3 minutes or so. 
Drain on a colander covered with a few layers of kitchen paper / tissues to absorb the excess oil.

Prepare ahead tip:
You can grind the chana dal and keep it refrigerated overnight. Add the rest of the ingredients just before shaping the vadas and frying, or the onions and greens will release water and make the vada mix soggy

Deep frying tip:
Deep fry on medium heat, so that the insides cook as the outside turns golden and crisp. 

Apple Pie Pancakes: Kid in the kitchen

Bear with me. More kiddie recipes coming your way. It's holiday time and I'm trying to combine my love for cooking, my son's gourmet palate and his endless two week long vacation to do something productive. I keep buying a kilo of apples each time, with intentions of making an apple pie. As the days progress, with my decreasing pie-making resolve, the apples start going into salads, with peanut butter for my snack or just hang around in the fruit basket until they die a slow death. 

Today, son and me, came up with this idea. So what if we don't make pie, we can make pie like pancakes. And that's how this came about. He helped chop the apples, measure out the ingredients and we made these together to the endless patter of "mummy, I will FLIP the pancakes. I love flipping."

It was so delicious and we nearly had a fork fight towards the end for the last bit. This makes a perfect holiday breakfast or an after school snack. Just keep the apples prepped and the batter prepared before they're back from school and two minutes is all it takes. I've made this a tad healthier by replacing part of the refined flour by whole wheat flour. Orange zest is entirely optional, but I believe it adds a lot of flavour to the mix. Use a fine grater to grate the skin of the orange, but not until you reach the white bitter part.

Apple Pie Pancakes
Makes 4 6" pancakes

Ingredients
1/2 cup refined flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1 pinch salt
1 cup milk
2 tsp white vinegar
2 large apples
1 tsp butter + some more to cook pancakes
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp orange zest (optional)
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

Directions
In a bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, sugar, salt, cinnamon powder with a whisk. Make a well, add the milk and vinegar. Gently mix together with a fork. Let this batter rest for 10 minutes.
Scrub the apples under running water. Core the apples and dice them into small pieces with skin. Heat 1 tsp butter in non stick pan. Add the diced apples, sugar, cinnamon powder, orange zest and toss them under low flame for 5 minutes or so, until apples are slightly soft and nicely golden.
Wipe the non stick skillet dry and place on medium heat, grease with some butter and pour a ladle full of batter. Don't spread it thin. Dot some butter around the pancake. When you see bubbles around the edges, it is time to flip over. Each side takes around 2 mins to cook and get golden, this depends on the thickness of your pancakes though.
Once done, remove on a plate and top with a layer of prepared apples. Fold over or serve as it is. Best eaten hot.