Recipes from Manju's kitchen: kera vada

This was my second month of Blogging Marathon; this month there are few interesting topic. For this week I choose pick one ingredient and make three dishes. As soon as I saw this topic my mind was fixed to Chana dal (Kadalai Parrupu) and I didn’t even rethink about the ingredient started to plan my dishes.

Today’s recipe is a starter or snack; this is one of the famous foods in Tamil Nadu. Kera vada as the name says we need to use kerai, mainly poriyal keerai is used for this. For a change I tried with drumstick leaves, usually we use this for ragi vadai.

Ingredients:

Chana dal (Kadala parrupu)	1 cup
Split peas dal (Vada/Pattani parrupu)	1 cup
Onion finely chopped	½ cup
Drumstick leaves	1 cup
Fennel seeds	1 Tbsp
Cinnamon	½ inch
Ginger	1 inch
Garlic pods	2-3
Green chilies	3-4
Coriander chopped	¼ cup
Curry leaves	few
Mint leaves chopped	2 Tbsp
Salt	as per taste
Oil	For deep fry

Directions:

Soak both dals for 3 hours.
Wash the soaked dal and take a handful of dal and keep aside. In a mixe jar add another handful of dal, garlic, ginger, green chilies and fennel seeds grind that to a smooth paste.
Using mixe or grinder grind the remaining dal to course paste by adding enough water (approximately ⅓ cup if needed add 1 Tbsp at a time).
Now mix both dal mixture and dal. Add chopped onion, coriander, mint, drumstick leaves and salt.
Mix well to blend. Heat oil in a kadai, make small balls wet your hand and flatten it, once the oil is hot enough to fry add this flatten vada one by one and deep fry until golden brown.

Note:

Instead of pattani parrupu you can use kadala parrupu. But pattani parrupu makes the vada crispier.
When having this with any payasam it will be a filling starter. Crumble this vadai and mix with ½ cup of payasam and eat immediately it will be yummy.