Every recipe that I post on this blog has a special place in my heart. But the traditional recipes that I post make me immensely happy. It feels like I am digging into a bag of sweet memories. My parents are here for last 45 days and I am enjoying every bit of their stay. Not only we talk endlessly sometimes, we cook so many things (I mean aayi cooks and I eat) which I would not have cooked alone. Daily I come up with a dish name and aayi is more than happy to make it for me. The whole credit to make these sun dried items goes to pappa and aayi, since they are the ones making sure these fritters get dried perfectly by making sure they are always under hot sun (like dragging the sheet across the tiny balcony of my home). In the process I am sure, they? are also dried a lot :(.
Now coming to this sabudana fritters, these are my favorite among all such sun dried fritters. These are not only eaten during meal, but also can be devoured any time during the day as snacks or chips. They are so crunchy, lightly sweet, tasty and … I can’t explain more, I am salivating terribly.
At my native, we have a neighbor whom we call fondly as mami (In Konkani, all the women neighbors and fellow Konkanis are called as mamis or vainis and guys are called mamas or annas ). This mami has a small business of making papads and vadis . When I was growing up, I was very fond of this mami and would go to help her. Of course I would demand that she help me make a big batch for me (which she always did happily). I picked up these sabudana fritter taste from her vadis . Now after some 15+ years, aayi made these again and I lived those days again.
Now, my next worry was, how am I going to eat them. I am avoiding deep fried items these days and I was fed up of drooling over these beautiful looking vadis for over a week now. Then my cousin came to my rescue. When we went to Boston last month, my cousin Ushakka had fried papads in microwave. I tried same with these, lined up few of the vadis in a single layer in microwave and let it go for 1 min . What did I see? A batch of beautiful looking, perfectly fried sabudana fritters. Did I mention that I was like dancing to I like to move it move it after eating them?
Ingredients: 1 cup sabudana / shabutandul/sabbakki 5 cups water 2 tea spn sugar 1/2 tea spn salt
Method: Wash sabudana in water and soak it in 2 cups of water for overnight. Add 3 more cups of water (2 cups used for soaking and 3 more cups at this stage to make a total of 5 cups) and cook this mixture on a low flame mixing continuously. When the sabudana is cooked, it turns transparent. Now add salt, sugar and boil for sometime. The consistency should be somewhat like dosa batter. If required add more water (keep in mind, the batter becomes drier and drier as it cools down).
Line up a plastic paper under the sun. Spread some water on it (just sprinkle a handful of water and spread it). When the batter is cooled down, spread the vadis .
Dry it till they come out easily off the paper and they have become crispy. Cool them to room temperature and then store in air tight container.
While using, deep fry them in oil (traditional method) or microwave them for 1 min(or less) till they have puffed up. Enjoy as a snack or sides with rice.
?PS: I am very unhappy with the pictures of these, but still I posted them because I feel it would help my readers to visualize how they look like in each step. Do not panic if they don’t look? good or look broken, they will be perfectly fine once done.
(Thanks Aruna for the suggestion to post this video here today).
While growing up, Independence day and republic day of India were big occasions for all kids. There used to be preparations for the parade weeks before these days.
On the big day, there used to be flag hoisting in our school early in the morning. Then our teachers would take us in a procession to a old fort in a nearby village called ‘Mirjan’. There, the kids of all neighboring schools would gather. The Chairman of the Mirjan gram (village) would hoist the flag and give a speech. They would distribute some sweets/candys to all the kids and we would come back to our respective schools. Ohh, I can’t explain how happy we used to be to get those sweets/candys, even though we used to eat like princes/princesses daily at home, those small pieces distributed on these days were a big treat for us. We also got to meet so many other school children, some of whom were very arrogant to talk and some were very friendly. I also remember, only 4+ standard(grade) children were taken to this fort because it was quite far and we had to walk all the way.
When I was in 4th, for some reason, they didn’t take us and I started crying out of frustration, teachers had a tough time to calm me down. Then my pappa took me to the fort in the evening to show the flag.
While we enjoyed in school, my parents would sit glued to the TV to watch flag hoisting on Red fort . They would watch the hoisting, parade and then speech by our Prime minister. This year, pappa was terribly missing all these, then he read the newspaper from start to finish to get the updates.
Aayi and pappa were telling all these stories to my husband yesterday, I wished I could go back to those days again, at least for one day. I am sure at least few of you have similar memories and if you are outside India, you must have terribly missed all the celebrations.
