Not just Vadai but spinach Vadai...

Vadai is a favourite savoury snack with its origins from South India. In Malaysia, many South Indian shops sell Vadai mostly at tea time but some sell them throughout the day as well. You also find Vadai sold in hawker stalls.

I am familiar with two types of Vadai - Ulunthu Vadai that is doughnut shaped and softer as compared with Paruppu Vadai that is rounded and is made with lentils and more crunchy. I'm sure there are other types of Vadai as well but these two are the most common.

Often in Malaysia, whenever you have family of friends coming over in the evening, you will buy a whole stack of Vadai to enjoy with a cup of tea (or coffee or cold drinks as may be the case). Vadai is just as famous as Currypuffs are in Malaysia.

I have to say that Vadai is the kind of thing that we would never imagine making. It looks too difficult and since its so easily available in the shops, we have never ever imagined making it.





The Lovely Wife however, decided she was going to try out a recipe from one of her Indian cookbooks. This Vadai is a little different. It is a version ofParuppu Vadai that uses spinach as one of the ingredients. That is rather uncommon and I believe made this Vadai all the more tasty.

This is her take on the recipe that comes from Indian Shortcuts to Success by Das Sreedharan

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups yellow split peas
250g spinach leaves, with stems removed
1 onion, finely chopped
2 green chillies, chopped finely
1 inch ginger, minced
10 curry leaves, chopped
salt

Method
Soak the pentils in a large bowl for about an hour. Meanwhile, blanch the spinach in hot water until just cooked. Set aside to cook then chop finely.
Drain the lentils and then process in the food processor till it becomes a coarse paste. Don't grind it too fine as you want some texture to the paste. Tip into a large bowl and add the spinach, onion, ginger, chillies and curry leaves. Season with salt and then mix well.
Divide mixture into small portions and roll into the size of a golf ball with your hands. Flatten into a small round patty.
Heat some vegetable oil in a deep wok or frypan till hot. Deep fry the patties until a deep golden brown. Remove and drain on paper towels.

To say the the Vadai turned out well would be an understatement. They were simply fabulous! As I said earlier, the spinach added a nice touch to the Vadai. Making the vadai was no where near as complicated as we thought it would be and actually it turned out to be rather easy.

This is the kind of food that people will be in awe of when they find that you prepared it at home. The Vadais didn't last very long and the main culprit that kept wolfing them down was none other than Me!



The Lovely Wife reckons that the next time she makes these, she will add some chopped dried chillis to the mix for a bit of a piquant zing. I can't wait till she makes it again...

Tarka Dhall

Lentil based dishes are a staple food in Indian cuisine. I've previously posted about Sambar which is one of my favourite dishes as well as Channa Dhall which is a chunkier Dhall dish.

Lentils are an amazing source of protein and can be a dish all on its own. Tarka, also known as Tadka, is the technique where spices are fried in oil or ghee to bring out the essential oils and flavour from the spices before being poured, together with the oil, into a main component of the dish - in this case the Dhall.

The recipe for this dish, made by The Lovely Wife, comes from 30 Minute Indian by Sunil Vijayakar. This book has yielded many a good recipe and although I scoffed at her when she first bought this book, I have to admit that it has provided some very good recipes and we have all enjoyed her exploits from this book.

This is her take on the recipe.

Ingredients
250g red split lentils
1 litre hot water
4-5 large tomatoes - chopped
2 chillies - chopped
1/2 tsps turmeric powder
2 tsps fresh ground ginger
4 Tbsp fresh coriander - chopped

Tarka
1 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
2 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 cloves garlic - sliced thinly
1 dried red chilli - cut into pieces
Method
Soak the lentils in boiling water for 10 mins. Drain and put into a large saucepan together with the 1 ltire of hot water. Bring to the boil and spoon off any scum that floats to the top. Reduce heat and allow to simmer for about 20 minutes or till soft and tender.
Drain the lentils and process in a food processor. Return the puree to the pan together with the tomatoes, chillies, turmeric, ginger and coriander. Season with salt and pepper and allow to simmer gently.
Make the tarka by heating the oil in a separate pan. Add in all the ingredients for the tarka and fry until fragrant, stirring constantly. Remove the tarka from heat and add into the Dhall. Stir to combine.

Dhall goes really well with rice and also flatbreads - I've probably said that before but its worth repeating. This Dhall is the sort of dish that you can never seem to get enough off and after one serving of rice, I had another smaller one and then another after that! The Lovely Wife didnt stop me from stuffing my face with this Dhall as after all, it is such a good source of protein and healthy, healthy, healthy!




The only complaint that she had was that I had a little too much fun with my princess where I would call out "Takda" and my princess would reply "Dhall" repeatedly like this...

Takda! ...Dhall
Takda! ...Dhall
Takda, Takda, Takda!... Dhall!

You can understand why The Lovely Wife was irritated. I do wonder how she puts up with me sometimes...

Channa Dhall - Chickpea Dhall

I've realised that writing up an interesting post to go with a particular recipe isn't as easy at is looks. I've also realised that I've got a fairly large backlog of photos/recipes that have not been posted. It would be fairly easy to just post a recipe together with the photos but then that kind of defeats the purpose of blogging.

Anyway, now you know that blogging isn't that easy and you also know that I have a backlog of posts.

Recently, The Lovely Wife has developed a penchant for all things vegetarian. No, she is not becoming a vegetarian (not yet!) and neither does she shun meat. She is cutting back on her meat intake though. There are a variety of reasons for this but suffice to say that it has something to do with the latest books she has been reading although she reckons it is more healthy for her - regardless of what the books may say.

What books? Well, Total Body Makeover (Bob Greene), Fit For Life (Harvey Diamond), The Enzyme Factor (Hiromi Shinya), The China Study (Colin Campbell, Thomas Campbell) and The Jungle Effect (Daphne Miller) are just SOME of the books that she recently read that have influenced her behaviour - and eating habits.

So anyway, to cut a long story short, I made this Chickpea Dhall as a meal one day. There is some debate as to what actually constitutes Channa Dhall. Some say that Channa is the same as Chickpeas while some say that Channa is actually yellow split lentils. I've always known Channa to be Chickpeas (or Garbanzo beans) so if I'm wrong, I stand corrected.



I've only ever made this once before, but I'm very used to making Sambar that is not terribly different but at the same time not the same either as Sambar is much smoother than Channa Dhall and Sambar contains a mix of vegetables while Channa Dhall doesn't. The similarity of course is that both take a fairly long time to cook although Channa Dhall takes a bit longer to become soft due to the thickness of the lentil.

This is my take on Channa Dhall.

Ingredients
1 inch ginger
3 cloves garlic
sprinkle of mustard seeds
4 cloves
1 large onion - sliced
2 tomatoes - chopped roughly
2 tsp tumeric powder
1-2 tsp curry powder
Chickpeas
Water
1 red chilli - chopped
2 tbsp milk
coriander leaves for garnishing
Method
grind ginger and garlic to a paste. Heat some oil and fry the mustard seeds, cloves, tumeric powder and curry powder. Add in the ginger/garlic paste and continue to fry. Add in onion and mix well then add in tomatoes and cook to a nice paste.
Add in the Dhall with lots of water. Mix well and allow to simmer for about 2 hours until the Dhall is very tender and mixture is thick. Add in some milk to thicken if required. Season with salt and black pepper. Serve with coriander

Channa Dhall is perfect as a meal on its own or as a side dish with other vegetable or meat dishes. It goes really well with Rice, Breads - like Naan, Chappati, Pita or even sliced bread. You really can't go wrong with this...!

Sambar for World Food Day

I posted about the World Food Day Event that my friends Valli and Ivy are hosting together earlier on this blog. I think this is a very noble cause in raising awareness of hunger and deprivation that exists all over the world.

Although I already posted about this, I thought that since the intent is to 'Feed that World' albeit in a virtual manner, the more food brought to this event the better. So in addition to my earlier post, I'm bring along a Sambar.


Sambar is definitely one of my favourite foods. This lentil based dish has many variations and is often considered one of the staple dishes in South Indian cuisine. It is akin to the Dhall in North Indian cooking. It is also very Malaysians since Malaysian food is so darned varied and includes Malay, Chinese and Indian Cuisine not to mention a whole host of other ethnic cuisines. This is my own homemade version of Sambar and since I am as Malaysian as can be, I reckon this qualifies as a National food!

Sambar is great in that it can be a meal all on its own, eaten with rice. Although usually vegetarian, there are some variants that add meat into it as well.

When I was a student, I used to cook this dish rather frequently. It was great comfort food and was relatively cheap as well while at the same time providing lots of protein. In fact, many friends from my Uni days, still remember my ‘legendary’ Sambar that we all used to tuck into and enjoy. Coupled with a fiery curry, this was just pure heaven on cold wintry nights!

This is what I do:

Ingredients
300g Lentils (yellow or orange lentils)
1 Large onion
2 slices ginger
2 tomatoes
2 potatoes
2 eggplants
2 carrots
2 tsp turmeric
Handful curry leaves
1 tsp curry powder
2 tsp Black Pepper
3 cloves
1 tsp fenugreek
1 tbsp oil
3 cups water
3 dried chillies
Salt


Method
Wash lentils and let soak for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, Pare potatoes and carrots and cut each potato into medium sized pieces and the carrot into longish slices. Do the same for the eggplant and quarter the tomatoes. Set vegetables aside.
Slice onion, chop garlic and cut chillies into large piece. Heat oil and fry onion, garlic, chillies, curry leaves, black pepper, cloves and fenugreek till fragrant. Add the curry powder and turmeric and fry lightly. Add the vegetables and fry lightly. Add in the water and lentils. Cover and let simmer till lentils are soft. You may need to add some water from time to time. Season with salt


You can add more water to make a thin Sambar or let it simmer longer for a thicker version. There are just so many possibilities! Sometimes, to add a little more flavour and ‘richness’, a little ghee (clarified butter) is poured over the Sambar and mixed with rice. I sometimes like to add ladysfingers (Okra) to the Sambar as well.





Sambar is just perfect eaten with rice or even flatbreads. A delicious and very nutritious food, it goes a long way and is the perfect food to serve for a lot of people.

So please lay this dish together with all the other ones to get "A conga line of international dishes to feed the world!!!!