This is one more kind of vadi/odi with mirsang (chilies), which is bit less popular than the classic kuvaLe (ash gourd) vadis . This is a must at my home and aayi makes these almost every year. These are generally not used for gravies like ash gourd vadis , but these are served along with papads with meals. A huge amount of green chilies are added to it to make them quite hot. Few people make some vadis which have both ash gourd and green chilies, but at my home we prefer these as separate ones. The batter is quite easy, but when deep fried and served with simple rice and curd, these make a very tasty and filing meal.
Ingredients: 1 cup urad dal 1 cup green chilies 1/2 tea spn asafoetida powder 2 tea spn sesame seeds( til ) Salt
Method: Soak urad dal in water for overnight. Grind it to a very smooth paste adding little water. If the paste is not smooth enough, the vadis become hard and difficult to eat. Grind the green chilies(without water) for a very coarse paste. Mix the dal paste, chili paste, salt, sesame seeds and mix.
Mix 1 tea spn oil in 1 cup water. Spread a plastic sheet under hot sun. Sprinkle some oiled water on the sheet. Spread vadis on it. Leave enough space between two vadis , since they spread after sometime.
Dry them till they come out of sheet easily and they are crisp.
Cool them to room temperature and store in air tight container. When required, take them out, deep fry and serve as side dish (like papads ).
(In the above picture, the left one is raw papad and the right ones are deep fried ones)
I hope my readers don’t get bored of my sun dried item series, because I have few more coming after this :).? I took advantage(or disadvantage) of my parents stay here to learn these all. So I can’t wait till I post them all here.
Now coming to keLe (banana) happoLu ( papad ). From my childhood, I have loved eating these. During my aayi’s childhood and college days, she had made these innumerable times. But down the line, somehow she stopped making these. Still we had a constant supply of these at home all the time. These taste great when deep fried or when fried on charcoal( kenDa ). In my aayi’s words, “the poha particles puff up like mothi (pearls) when these are deep fried”. Though she didn’t make these papads at home, she served the papad dough( hapLa peet ) as side dish every now and then.
At our place, we get a special kind of cooking bananas that we call as anbaLi or phodi keli (used to make phodis ). But any kind of cooking bananas can be used for this, by cooking banana, I mean the ones which are not eaten raw. These are usually available in vegetable isle in supermarkets. We used the ones that we bought from Indian store here.
When we were making these, hubby had no clue about all the excitement my aayi and I were showing. He said, “I don’t think I am going to like to eat those”.? We didn’t say anything, we knew once he tastes them, he will never forget. We had two small bananas, from which we got just 10 papads . Do I need to say they were instant hits once we deep fried them? They tasted just out of the world, spicy, very light and crunchy and had a asafoetida flavor to them. They were dried instantly and shrink considerably in size when dried.
Ingredients: 2 plantains/cooking bananas ( AnbaLi/phodi keLi ) 2 tbl spn chili powder 1/4 tea spn asafoetida 1 cup coarse powder of poha/avalakki Salt
Method: Keep the poha under sun for some time so that it becomes slightly crisp (this step is only to help grinding poha easily, we spread the poha on a hot tava for a short time to make it slightly crisp). Powder it coarsely. Cook bananas(with the skin) in steam, ie, in cooker, take the bananas in a vessel or plate and add very little water(may be 1 or 2 tbl spns) and cook.
Take out the bananas and peel the skin off the bananas, when they are still hot, the skin comes off very easily.
Grease a mixer/blender vessel with a little oil and grind the hot bananas with chili powder, salt, asafoetida, without adding water. Take out the paste, apply a little coconut oil to hands and make small balls from the mixture.
Wrap a plastic paper or aluminum foil to both rolling pin and rolling table ( lat paLe ). Roll the balls into round thin papads, apply as much poha powder as needed to help rolling.
Carefully take them off the paper and spread them on a sheet or a cloth under hot sun.
When the papads are dried completely and have become crisp, cool them to room temperature and store in air tight container. While serving, deep fry the papads and enjoy.
PS : Be very careful while grinding bananas. These bananas are very hard to grind and they make a sticky paste. So cut them in to small pieces before grinding. When they cool down, they become hard and you cannot grind them. Mixer/grinder gets stuck most of the time. I had thought my new Sumeet mixer had burned out when we were grinding this, but luckily it survived :).
The ready dough(cooked banana+chili powder+salt+asafoetida) can also be served as a side dish with rice and any dal /gravy.
