Batata vada with garlic chutney
An easy recipe of Mumbai's favourite street food of batter fried spiced potatoes - batata vada with garlic chutney - eaten just as is or stuffed in between dinner rolls
Equipment
- Kadhai/Indian wok
Ingredients
For the batata vadas
- 4-5 large potatoes boiled & mashed
- 1 cup besan gram flour
- 10-12 fresh curry leaves
- 3 tbsp ginger crushed
- 3 tbsp garlic crushed
- 3 tbsp green chilis crushed (optional)
- ¼ cup coriander leaves chopped
- 1 tsp hing asafoedita
- 1 tbsp turmeric powder
- 1 tbsp mustard seeds
- 10-12 large green chilis slit from the centre
- oil for deep frying
- salt to taste
For the garlic chutney
- ½ cup gram flour batter*
- ¼ cup garlic cloves peeled & roughly chopped
- ¼ cup dried red chilis roughly chopped
- salt to taste
Instructions
To make the batata vadas
- Heat a small frying pan with 2-3 tablespoons of the oil. When hot, add the mustard seeds and wait until they splutter
- Then add the curry leaves, hing, ginger, garlic, chilis and turmeric
- Fry this well for 2-3 minutes or until the raw smell of the ginger and garlic goes away. Remove from flame
- In a mixing bowl, take the potatoes and pour the fried ginger and garlic mixture into it, along with salt and the chopped coriander leaves
- Mix well so that everything is well incorporated. Divide this mixture into equal sized balls
- In another bowl, whisk the gram flour with a touch of salt and add water gradually to form a lump free and moderately thick batter**
- Set the kadhai with the oil to heat. Add a tablespoon of the hot oil to the besan batter and mix well - this results into crispy vadas
- Dip the spiced potato balls in the gram flour batter, coat well and deep fry them over moderate heat, until golden brown all over
- Remove and drain the batata vadas on kitchen towels
- In the same oil, fry the large green chilis for 30 seconds each. Remove on kitchen towels and drizzle some salt over them
To make the garlic chutney
- Give the the gram flour batter, made in step 6, a good mix with about 2 tbsp of water, with your fingers, to loosen it up
- Now, over the same frying pan, drizzle this mixture and fry until they are crisp. Do this for about ½ cup of the leftover batter
- Remove these gram flour bubbles on a paper towel
- When slightly cooled down, blitz this along with the garlic cloves, dried chilis and salt in a blender, until everything is broken down and homogenous
- This is your garlic chutney for batata vadas. Remove in a bowl
- Serve the batata vada with the garlic chutney and fried chilis, hot and fresh, as is or with dinner rolls or pav. Enjoy!
Notes
- *Use the batter made for the batata vadas itself
- **The batter should neither be too thin nor too thick. If too thin, it will not coat the vadas well and if too thick, the fried vadas will taste more of the batter than the potatoes
- Do not over crowd the kadhai/wok when frying them
- I was able to make 12 large batata vadas out of these quantities
- tbsp - tablespoon
- tsp - teaspoon