Dahi Vada for the Soul

This edition of Dahi Vada for the Soul is for those souls like me who are displaced from their home and then are in an effort to fill their lives with activities that will make them feel at home in the present circumstances. In fact, I was strongly debating whether I should call this edition Batata Vada for the Soul, but then, my experiences with the same have not been so great!

So, this weekend, I spoke with my ma, and out of nowhere, the topic of Dahi Vada came up. Now, come to think of it, nothing in our conversation warranted the mention of Dahi Vada, but as they say, moms truly know what “food for thought” to feed their kids. J So armed with my mom’s recipe, I started on one of my… umm… for a lack of better word, let’s just call them “culinary expeditions”. You know, they really do merit that phrase because their chronicles are filled with exploding pressure cookers, melting stirrers, scores of cuts on the fingers with knives, blood spurting from my hands when I ‘accidentally’ tried to open a tin can, yells of “we need a medic!”, blaring fire alarms in the kitchen when I forgot to turn off the stove, but most of the times ending in a satisfying well earned meal relished in the ruins of a kitchen surrounded by mound of pots and pans and a smoke filled apartment.

So, this time, I was attempting something a lot more close to my heart. That fabulous dish invented in India – Dahi Vada. The recipe was quite simple actually. Just soak the ‘Urad’ dal for a couple o’ hours, then drain the water, add things you like in it, grind it all and fry! (Needless to say, quoting this recipe on your website which get you tons of hate mail J) And of course, the dahi was the simplest part of it all: the beat the dahi, add awesome stuff like masala, sugar et al, and that’s it! No room for exploding cookers, melting pots mayhem. J

So off I went, merrily along with my recipe in my mind. I soaked the dal, drained it all, added ‘raapchik’ things like ginger-garlic paste, ‘kothimbir’(cilantro), ‘mirchi’ (hot pepper) etc and then grinded it all to a paste in the blender. And then that’s when I realized. In all my excitement, I had ground the paste a little too much and now it was quite soft. There was no way, I felt, that it would hold on its own, in the hot oil in the frying pan. The mood in the kitchen changed very suddenly. The buoyant, adventuresome mood quickly changed to something that can only be described by the sound you make when you hit such situations: “Uh-oh!” or rather more accurately: “Oh crap!”

Several wild ideas popped into my mind as to how we can save the situation. My roommate ‘You-Know-Who’ J too started looking around for something to thicken the paste. Options from nowhere came to my mind. Like chana peeth or besan used in making bhajis. I thought, why not? - that thing sure does help the kaanda and batata hold its own in the oil, may be it can help my poor little vada today. Rice flour, thaalipeeth flour, rava, extra daal several such options popped into my head. None of them gave me the courage to try it out. Then, I started pondering on the ideas to remove water from this paste so as to make it drier and thus butch up the hardness so that it can stick together in the oil. So things like, “let’s bake this dude, that’ll suck out some water!” “or may be I can blow dry it, we have a table fan somewhere don’t we?” J But then, I dreaded making things worse and images of vada paste blown all over the kitchen and removing a charcoal looking paste from the oven came to my mind. So I dropped the idea. Internet too wasn’t offering any great help. Apparently Google doesn’t give any helpful insights when you search “how to dry dahi vada” or “how to thicken dahi vada” L L. It wasn’t possible to call home, since it was 6 o’ clock in the morning on a Sunday, and my mom would have killed me if I had woken her up to ask “Ma, how do you thicken vadas” J So then, with sheer guts I entered the kitchen. You-Know-Who then told me: “Arre, itna effort maaraa hai, to ek vada aisehi fry karke dekh… fight martey hai, nahi hua to apna Dominos hai na speed dial pe”

So then, with You-Know-Who holding the karchhi and I holding the pot of paste, we approached the hot oil. With hope in my eyes and prayer on my lips, I released the first little ball of paste into the oil…. It sizzled…. It crackled…. It turned a little brown… and yes! Yes! Yes! It held! My sweet little balls of vada held their own against the might of the sizzling hot oil! I remember actually letting out a shout of triumph at that moment. My Dahi Vadas were on their way to be dressed in sweet-spicy Dahi and becoming a mouth watering dish!

As I sat that evening thoroughly relishing my preparation, it occurred to me to write this blog in the style of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books. This Dahi Vada was just like a Chicken Soup to my soul. I was damn proud to be able to make a dish I had always dreamt of attempting, but at some level, it gave me a satisfaction of being closer to home. I was experiencing a queer satisfaction that was far greater than what I should normally have had from just making a dish. I realize now, that at some level, I was that much closer to my home, and it made me very happy that I had achieved that. Sometimes in life, we do certain things that, unknown to us, signify something altogether deep to our heart.

Go on, make your own "Dahi Vada". J