Crispy Lentil Snacks - Daal Vada

Any Indian meal is incomplete without tangy pickles, crisp poppadoms and some sort of deep fried accompaniments. And when my friend Prerna, Barbara and Kathy announced 'Indian Food Palooza' at their blogs, I thought of taking these Crispy Lentil Vadas along with me to join their on going event.

A perfect tea time snack, a popular street food and a must during most of the festive meals in India, these Daal Vadas or deep fired crisp lentil cakes are a real delicacy.
And I am sure each family has their own ways and proportions of making these snacks adopting to their taste buds. Some use more chilly, onion, garlic or ginger and greens in the recipe while for others its just a mix of lentil paste and spices.

At home my MIL makes two batches always during any festival period, one will be plain Vadas, while the other will batch will be bursting with sliced onions and garam masala powder.The first batch is cooked as the offering to God while the other is for us to savor.

Ingredients;
(makes 20-25 small pieces)

• 1/2 cup Bengal gram (channa dal)
• 1/2 cup split green gram (moong dal)
• 1 tbsp. fresh grated coconut 
• 3 dry whole red chillies
• 1 tsp. salt
• A few curry leave
• A pinch of asafoetida powders
• Oil for deep frying

Method; Wash and soak both the grams for about two hours.
Drain and keep a tbsp of soaked gram separately. Grind both the grams along with all the other ingredients except oil and curry leaves into a coarse paste. Try to avoid water while grinding the paste. The water in the drained gram will be adequate to grind it into a paste.
Add chopped curry leaves and the 1 tbsp of soaked whole daal (grams)kept separately in the paste and mix well.
Heat oil in a wok. Take a small batter and make a round ball of it, flatten it a little and drop it into the hot oil. Repeat the same till you are done with all the Vadas. Fry the Vadas for 2 minutes on high heat ad then reduce the heat and fry till they turn golden in color.

Serve hot with green coriander and mint chutney or with tomato sauce.

Notes;

1. This recipe has no onion, garlic and other spice as these is cooked as a offering to the God, but they taste delicious.
2. You could add one finely chopped onion, a little bit of garam masala and fennel powder to make it more aromatic and tastier.

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