Dahi Vada


A recipe from a friend on the net. This dish is variously an appetiser or a dessert.

Ingredients:

Steps:
Its enuff if the dal and rice soak for 2-3 hours. Even an hour will do.
Grind them to a fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine paste. DO NOT add too much water
just to make it fine. Keep the batter thick and yet finely ground. Meaning
you'll have to run the grinder for a loooooooooooooooooong time. Ditto with
rice too. So for about 4.5 cups of urad dal you'll use about 0.5 cups of
rice. Grind the rice and urad dal separately and then mix them together.
Now add the following to the batter. 

The coconut is optional, and if you don't have soda, don't despair. Just
leave the batter COVERED for about half hour so that it ferments slightly. 

Now comes frying. Take batter into hand or use tablespoon if you are
comfortable with that and deep fry spoonfuls of batter in hot oil. Fry till
the vadas are a light brown and remove. Immediately after you remove them
from the oil, dunk them into some water at room temperature. Keep a bowlful
of water handy beforehand. They'll make a chooooooiiiiiiiii noise. Make
sure they go completely underwater for about 2 minutes. If you touch them
they should lose crispiness but not crumble.

Do this to all the batter. Arrange all the vadas one next to other in one
layer. All vadas won't fit, so put only bottom layer. Now dunk dahi in a
bowl, and using a fork beat it thoroughly to remove lumps. Add some chopped
green chili, salt to taste, red chili powder to taste, chat masala for
flavor. Now dunk this beaten dahi over the first layer of vadas, and then
place next layer of vadas. Add dahi over them again, and continue till all
the vadas are over. At the very top put lots of dahi. Decorate with red
chili powder and chaat masala and finally sprinkle with chopped coriander
leaves.

Now this itself can be served, but if you want it to be perfecto, then make
some coriander chutney by grinding green chillies, coriander leaves and
lime juice and salt together. Also make some sweet chutney using tamarind and 
sugar and red chili powder and salt.

Before serving dunk lil bit of both chutneys over the vadas and dahi and
... finito!