Masal Vadai

We had a pot luck lunch today and I prepared some masal vadai and joined my buddies for this event. It was very interesting as it was the first pot lunch event in my life.  We had a variety of delicious spread in front of us in the lunch table viz., Sindhi Curry, Dahi Balla, Dahi Vada, Soft rotis, Rice, Ladies finger curry, cauliflower, potato curries, two varieties of dal vadais, two varieties of milk kheer, Besan Ladoo, garlic chutney, etc.  Each dish had a unique touch of the person who prepared it, thus making it very special.  It was droolicious. I wish I had taken photo of the same. But the foodie inside me was more eager to taste them so I just got busy in helping myself with the goodies :p

Masal vadai is a flavourful form of dal vada (paruppu vadai / parippu vadai) which make the otherwise normal dal vada even more interesting. 

I used a bit of yellow peas dal (pattani parippu) which  makes it crunch rather than the regular soft vadais. Use of toor dal add to its taste than the regular mono channa dal.

Let us get on to the making of crunchy and tasty masala vadai.

You will need :- (makes approx. 30 meidum sized vadais)

1. Toor Dal - 1 Cup
2. Channa Dal - 1/4 Cup
3. Peas Dal - 1/4 cup
4. Urad dal - 1 tbsp
5. Salt to taste
6. Curry leaves - 12 Nos.
7. Coriander leaves - 2 tbsp
8. Red chillies - 5 Nos. (or as per taste)
9. Onion - 2 Nos (medium)
10. Ginger - 1.5" piece
11. Garlic - 3 pods (big)
12. Asafoetida powder - 2 pinches
13. Fennel seeds - 2 tsp
14. Oil for frying

Procedure :-

• Soak the dals together for 2 hours along with red chillies.
• Drain the water. Take a tbsp of the soaked dal, put it in a mixing bowl and keep it aside.
• Finely chop Onion, Coriander leaves, Curry leaves, ginger, garlic pods
• In a blender grind the dal coarsely along with chillies, chopped ginger and garlic pods.
• Transfer the coarsely ground dal mixture to the mixing bowl.
• Add chopped onion, coriander leaves, curry leaves, fennel seeds, asafoetida powder, salt to taste.
• Mix well.
• Divide into equal portions.
• Roll and flatten them. 

 I used to flatten with just one hand, by placing the ball on the four fingers and placing the thumb over it as shown in the above picture. thus you get a nice impression of your fingers on the back side while the other side reminds flat.

• Heat the oil in a wok. Put a piece of dal mix. If it rise immediately, then oil is ready for frying. If not, wait for some more time.
• Fry each flat vadais in hot oil on medium flame, by turning them in between so that they get friend equally. 

• Fry till they are nice golden in color.

• Drain them, transfer on a paper to remove excess oil.
• Store in an air tight container when cools down.
• Crunchy and tasty, flavourful masala vadai is ready to go as a snack or as an accompaniment with hot tea or coffee.