Amboday | Fried Lentil Fritters

Usually we prepare this when we have some guests at home for lunch or during festivals/functions.A mug[cup is not enough for me :)] of hot coffee and these snacks are absolute heaven on cold rainy evenings.

You need to soak these for 2-3 hours:
Toor dhal-1 cup
Gram dhal – 2 teaspoons
Red chillies – 3-4

You also need:
Asafoetida powder
Coconut – 2 teaspoons-cut into small pieces
Curry leaves
Oil for deep frying

1.Wash the dhals in the same water and drain completely.
2.Grind coarsely [for just a minute] using very little water along with chillies [We get crunchy vadai with coarsely ground paste].
3.To this add chopped curry leaves,coconut pieces,salt and asafoetida and mix well.
4.Make small balls flatten lightly and deep fry till golden brown

There is another method of preparing this with spices,called –MASAL VADAI.

For this omit the coconut pieces and add finely chopped onion,a little bit of grated ginger,cinnamon pieces,a few fennel seeds to the ground paste and proceed as above.In our familymasal vadai is usually not prepared for festivals.

When I was a little girl,a mouse got into our house and kept chewing anything and everything that came its way.Fed up trying to chase away the mouse[which seemed to disappear when we came looking for it],my dad got a mouse trap to be set that night.Then he suddenly exclaimed, “Oh no,we can’t set the trap tonight,we don’t have masal vadai..”.What has masal vadai got to do with setting a mouse trap?

Looking at my confused expression dad continued to say that the aroma of masal vadai will lure the mouse into the trap and we can set it free somewhere else.[No loss of life!!]

Next day we got masal vadai from the neighbourhood tea-stall [for me as well for the dear little mouse] and finally caught the mouse which had eluded us for weeks and set it free in the nearby woods.

Whenever I hear the word masal vadai or see a mouse I always remember this incident .