Curd Vada is the deep-fried vadas soaked in Yogurt. The dish here is purely a South-Indian cuisine. The hot deep-fried vadas are first put in buttermilk or water and then transferred to thick beaten yogurt. For best results, the vadas are soaked for at least a couple of hours before serving. To give a flavor, tempering is done to these curd vadas by adding cumin seeds, mustard seeds, red whole chilies, curry leaves and garnished with coriander leaves and boondi (a spicy savory). There are so many variations in flavoring the dish like in Northern India, after the vadas are soaked in buttermilk or water, it is served with yogurt, coriander chutney, dates chutney or tamarind chutney, chat masala, cumin powder and chilly powder. Here the dish is given totally a different twist.
Ingredients:
1. Black gram/Urad dal - 1 cup
2. Yogurt/curds - 1 and half cup
3. Mustard seeds - 1 tsp.
4. Curry leaves - 1 spring
5. Red Chilies - 2 no.
6. Coriander leaves - handful
7. Salt to taste
8. Oil for frying
Cooking Method:
1. Clean the urad dal and soak for around 2 to 3 hours in the water.
2. Grind the urad dal, into a fine paste in a grinder/mixie. Do not add water while grinding just wet the batter with drops of water for the grinder/mixie to operate. Add salt to it while grinding.
3. More fine the batter and more light, the vadas comes out fine.
4. With half cup of yogurt, just mix half cup of water and churn this into a butter milk. Add few leaves of coriander to it and keep it aside.
5. Heat the oil in the deep frying pan.
6. Make the shape of a doughnut and fry the Vadas.
8. Once the vadas turn golden brown, drop them in the already kept aside butter milk.
9. Wait for some time until the vadas soak all the butter milk. Until that beat the yogurt finely and arrange all other ingredients for tempering.
10. After the soaking part add the beaten yogurt and time for garnishing.
11. In another pan, take a half tsp. of oil and add mustard seeds. Once this splutters, add cumin seeds (optional), red chilies and curry leaves. Pour this tempering on the vadas.
12. Finally garnish with boondi and coriander leaves and serve chilled.
