Sabudana Vada

Savory sago pearl fried fritters

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend. We were talking about heirloom keepsakes and childhood memories.  He is a doctor and he was telling me how he wanted to preserve the last prescription his Grandfather, who was a doctor as well, wrote! That immediately struck a connection with me, as I have always felt proud to preserve my Aji’s handwritten cookbook – One of my most priced possessions :). I told him he could farme that prescription and hang it in his clinic in the future, just like I wanted to frame some of my favorite recipes in Aji’s handwriting and hang them in my future kitchen.

the conversation left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling and the desire to cook and post one of my favorite recipes from the book 🙂 So here it is!

That’s a copy of the recipe in Aji’s handwriting. Now this recipe is a little ridiculous, with the amount of peanut powder, so if you can read Marathi, ignore that recipe, I have a revised version of it (slightly healthier, and a non-fried one!) Its one of those recipes of hers that I can’t really carry off today as they are, but I remember clearly how her Sabudana vadas tasted, and I can assure you that this recipe comes very close 🙂

You will need (serves 2-3):

Sabudana (sago pearls) 1/2 cup, dry – measured before soaking -soak this overnight – take the sago in a bowl. Wash the pearls in cold water thoroughly a couple of times, leave about a quarter centimeter deep water on top, cover and let it rest overnight or at least 6-7 hours.

This will double in volume and a little more. My half cup of sago yielded a cup of soaked sabudana and some more.

Peanuts – deskinned, roasted and crushed into a coarse powder – you can find the procedure here –  1/2 cup

1 large potato – boiled, peeled and mashed/ grated

1 tablespoon of varyache tandul (samo/ vrat ke chawal) – made into a powder – this is the secret ingredient to get that golden crunch!

seasoning:

salt

1 tsp chilli powder – optional. you can skip this and add only green chillies if you like

1 tsp crushed green chilies or more if you want to make them spicy

1/2 tsp of cumin seeds

and some chopped cilantro

Oil for frying

Procedure:

• Mix all the ingredients into a homogenous mixture

• Sprinkle some water as needed to make small balls of this mixture. Make tight balls that stay together well.
• Heat refined oil for frying
• Flatten the ball slightly and fry in hot oil for 2-3 minutes each or until golden brown and crisp. this takes a bit of patience, do not fry on high flame, or the vadas will remain undercooked inside.

For non-fried method:

• If you’re planning to fry in an indented pan (appe patra) to make non-fried version, make the balls with gentle pressure. Do not press them into dense clusters.

• Heat appe patra (indented pan), if you don’t have this you can either shallow fry small flat wadas on a skillet (like the thalipeeth, you can also make a thalipeeth with this dough technically)
• Add a little bit of oil i each compartment. Test the oil to ake sure its hot and place the balls of dough into each compartment, they should make a sizzling noise.

• cover with a lid and cook on low-medium flame for 5-10 minutes
• When they are cooked, you will notice that they bulge a little and take up the whole space in the appe patra, and the side touching the bottom is crispy and golden brown (you will smell the goodness at this point)
• Add a dot of oil or ghee on the top of the uncooked side (facing top) and flip them, increase the heat to med-high
• These should make a sizzling noise again. Cook this side without covering until its crispy golden brown on this side as well!

Serve hot with cucumber chutney

For the chutney – blend together a small cucumber, yogurt, 1 green chilli, a bunch of cilantro leaves, crushed peanuts, lemon juice, salt and sugar to make a dip for the vadas. Add a good amount of sugar to get the right taste to go with the spicy vadas