Mysore Bonda

Ingredients
Urad Dal ½ cup
Chenna Dal 1-2 tsp
Salt to taste
Green Chillies
Black pepper seeds
Coconut cut into thin small slices
Ginger
Curry leaves
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Soak the two dals separately. Drain the excess water.
2. Grind the salt, green chillies, ginger, urad dal to a smooth batter using no water as much as possible. If need be, sprinkle water.
3. Mix in the curry leaves, soaked & drained chenna dal & the black pepper seeds.
4.Heat oil in a wok on medium heat.
5.Wet your palms, roll the batter into a ball (say the size of a small golf ball) and drop into the oil.
6. Flip the bondas so they are uniformly cooked. Take them out when they are golden brown.
7. Place on tissue to drain the excess oil.
8. Serve with ketchup , chutney and /or sambhar.

Tips
To get the right consistency of the batter, put a drop of it in a bowl containing water; if it floats, then it is the right consistency else it has to be ground a little more.

Thukda

Ingredients
Rava ½ cup
Salt to taste
Chilli powder ½ tsp
Asafoetida
Water
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Mix in the rava, chilli powder, salt and asafoetida. Sprinkle some water to just wet the sooji mixutre.
2. Set aside for a while (say 15 minutes)
3. If the mix is too dry, sprinkle more water while kneading to make a dough like that for puris.
4. Put this into a mixer and using the whip button; grind the dough to make it a little smooth.
5. Take a ball of the dough and roll out into a thin chapati. Roll a pizza cutter(or a serrated rolling cutter) and make small diamond/square pieces
6. Heat some oil in a kadai on a low heat.
7. When the oil is hot enough (a small ball of the dough should rise up when thrown into the oil), put in the cut pieces of the roti.
8. Deep fry the thukda till the bubbles subside; tossing them around to cook them till they are cooked and crispy.
9. Take them out and place on tissue to absorb the excess oil. Then store in an airtight container.

Tips
You could do this with maida where in, it is not necessary to run the batter in the mixer. Just replace rava with maida and make the dough like you would for puris.

Vadai Pachadi

Ingredients
Vadai Batter
Yogurt
Mustard seeds
Urad dal
Oil
Curry leaves
Asafoetida
Salt to taste

Get Cooking!
1. Heat some oil in a kadai on low flame.
2. Drop small globules (say a teaspoonful) of vadai batter into the oil carefully.
3. Beat some yogurt with a wee bit of salt; add the globular vadais into the yogurt.
4. Season it with mustard seeds, urad dal, curry leaves and asafoetida.

Tips
You could grind some grated coconut with green chillies,ginger. Add this to the yogurt and mix it up.

Vadai

Ingredients
Urad dal
Salt
Green chillies
Curry leaves
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Soak the urad dal well (say about 45 mins to an hour). Drain the excess water by placing it in a colander.
2. Grind this dal with salt, green chillies. Try not adding water at all; if you have to, sprinkle ice cold water. The batter must become smooth and not watery.
3. Add the curry leaves. Mix well.
4. Heat some oil in a kadai on a low heat.
5. Wet your palms, place some batter on them; flatten it out, make a hole with your finger. Put it into the oil carefully.
6. Add enough vadais depending on the quantity of oil taken.
7. When the vadais are half done, take them out and set aside. Do the next set.
8. Now, take the set that has been kept aside; deep fry till they turn golden brown. This is to make them nice & crispy.
9. Do this to the entire ground batter.

Tips
You could add some ginger/ red chillies while grinding the batter. You could also add chopped onions. Make some rasam and place the vadais in the rasam to make rasa vadais or in sambhar to make sambhar vadais

Stuffed Puris

Ingredients
Atta
Moong Dal
Green Chillies
Salt
Water
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Soak the moong dal for an hour or so. Drain the water.
2. Grind this into a coarse paste with green chillies and salt. Set aside.
3. Knead the atta with some salt, oil into a dough using minimal water.
4. Roll out very thin puris (of say diameter 3-4″).
5. Place a tsp of the coarse paste in the middle. Fold the puri into half and seal the edges with some water.
6. Fry these stuffed puris in oil on a medium-low heat.
7. Turn these puris around with a ladle to cook them evenly till they are golden brown. (the puris tend to flop to one side which would be heavy because of the stuffing…hence this point )
8. Serve with ketchup or chutney.

Tips

You could make the dough and roll out the puris and save them inside an old magazine while the dal is being soaked.
You could cut out the edges using a somasi cutter or the serrated roller cutter thingie?!
For the paste, I added a bit of chat masala. So, use imagination for the stuffing.
I also did all the stuffed puris before starting to fry them up

One huge tip! Since I had leftover puris and no stuffing, I still fried these up like usual puris which turned out to be crispy like papads. Break these up to a powder and add powdered sugar. You could eat them as is as a powder or be more adventurous with calories, add ghee and roll these into a ball to make puri urundai

Vegetable Cheese Cutlet

It is a good dish for a snack.

Ingredients
Grated vegetables – 1/2 cup
Grated cheese – 2 tsp
Black pepper powder – 1 pinch
Cornflour – 2 tsp
Cilantro – 1 tsp
Potato (steamed, peeled & mashed) – 1/2 cup
Bread crumbs
Maida
Salt
Butter – 1 tbsp
Ginger-garlic paste – 1tsp
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Cook the grated vegetables with a little salt & mash.
2. Heat the butter on a medium-low heat, add the ginger-garlic paste and roast till the raw smell disappears.
3. Mix in the vegetables, potato, cornflour, black pepper powder, chopped cilantro and salt
4. Once this becomes homogenous, add in the grated cheese. Switch the heat off.
5. Cool and knead this and make into cutlets.
6. Make a watery batter of maida. Dip the cutlets into this.
7. Then roll them on the bread crumbs.
8. Fry the cutlets and serve with ketchup

Tips
Paneer can replace cheese. One can use wheat flour instead of cornflour and maida.

Panchapandavar Vadai

Ingredients
Chenna dal 1 cup
Urad dal 1 cup
Tuvar Dal 1cup
Moong Dal 1 cup
Black eyed peas (Karamani) 1 cup
Onions finely chopped – 1 cup
Grated coconut 1/2 cup
Curry leaves
Coriander leaves
Chillies
Salt
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Grind the dals to a coarse powder (rava types)
2. When required, soak this rava for about an hour. Strain away excess water.
3. Mix in the other ingredients except oil and make into a vadai batter like that in aama vadai
4. Fry the vadais up and serve.

Batata chakli

Ingredients
Rice flour
Potatoes
Chilli powder
Salt
Ajwain
Asafoetida
Turmeric powder
Cumin powder
Ghee
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Grate the potatoes and puree it in a mixer.
2. Mix rice flour, turmeric powder, chilli powder, cumin powder, ajwain, a little asafoetida, salt, raw pureed potatoes and about half cup of ghee.
3. Knead into a nice dough. Keep it aside for 20 – 30 minutes.
4. Put it into the greased press and fry out the chaklis till they are golden brown

Thattai

A yummy snack

Ingredients
Rice flour 2 cups
Urad Dal flour ¼ cup
Sesame seeds
Curry leaves
Chenna dal
Salt
Red Chilli powder
Asafoetida
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Mix in the rice flour and urad dal flour.
2. Soak the chenna dal in some warm water for a while till it gets soft and drain away the water
3. Add the salt, red chilli powder, asafoetida, sesame seeds, soaked chenna dal, curry leaves to the flour.
4. Pour in some water little by little to the flour to make the dough such that it is not too water nor too powdery.
5. To make the thattai, grease a banana leaf (or an aluminium foil / thick plastic sheet). Take some dough and flatten it out into circles on the sheet/ leaf. Take care while taking them off to fry them
6. Heat oil in a wok. If you put in a pinch of dough in, it should float back to the surface. This means that the oil is ready for frying the thattai.
7. Put in the thattai carefully into the oil. Fry them flipping them such that they are golden brown on either side on medium heat.
8. Take the fried thattai out and place on a tissue paper to drain out the excess oil.

Tips
You could add a little butter/hot oil while making the dough. You could also add some pepper powder which will increase the spice level in the thattai

Ribbon Pakoda

A nice fried snack.

Ingredients

Besan 2 cups
Rice Flour 1 cup
Salt to taste (about 3 tsp)
Red chilli powder 3 tsp
Asafoetida
Butter/ Ghee
Oil for frying

Get Cooking!

1. Mix the above ingredients well.
2. Add a little water to make a thick pasty kind of mixture
3. Heat up the oil in a kadai for frying
4. Once the oil is warm, take the batter in sev maker with the ribbon pakoda plate (will have small slits which are parallel to each other)
5. Squeeze out the batter, swirling it around to spread it inside the oil.
6. Keep frying until the ribbon pakoda is cooked well flipping it often.

Tips

A ladle of hot oil can be used instead of the butter/ghee. Do not mix up all the flour together with water. Do so little by little, just the amount you can use in the sev maker. This way, the ribbon pakoda will not brown up and come out nicely golden brown each time.