Vaazhaipoo Vadai (Plantain flower vada)/ Plantain Flower Fritters

This is a very famous and delicious chettinad recipe. The tough and time consuming task in this recipe is cleaning the plantain flower. We can schedule the recipe for 2 days, i.e first day,  cleaning the plantain flower and the second day, preparing dough and then vada. All the effort we put in, will yield a good, tasty , crispy vada and will be loved by everyone.

Plantain flower is very good for ladies for uterus related problems. Children will not eat this if we make poriyal, thuvattal, kootu, etc., due to its sour (thuvarpu in Tamil) taste but it will be irresitible when it is tranformed into vada. There are many fans (family, friends&colleagues) for my vazhaippoo vadai and  I am dedicating this recipe especially to them.

Ingredients:

•   Plantain flower (small) -1 no
•   KadalaiParuppu – 200 gm
•   Red chillies – 6 nos
•   Fennel seeds – 1 Tbsp
•  Garlic – 2 to 3 pods
• Green chillies (finely chopped) – 2 nos
• Asafetida  -  1 tsp
• Turmeric powder – 1 tsp
• Shallots – 8 to 10 nos or big onion – 1 no.
• Rice flour – 2 Tbsp
• Coriander and curry leaves ( finely chopped)- 3 Tbsp
• Salt as required
• Oil as required.

Method:

Soak the kadalaiparuppu and red chillies for minimum one hour. Now add the soaked dhal along with red chillies and garlic and grind it coarsely without adding water as we do  for “Aamavadai” . Then,  clean the plantain flower ( I’ll blog the step by step procedure for cleaning the plantain flower) , thoroughly  wash the florets in water and chop it finely and put in the water diluted with curd (add 2 to 3 Tbsps of curd in a cup of water) so that the plantain flower will not turn into black color. Nicely squeeze out the water from the chopped florets and add this to the ground dhal. With this, add fennel seeds, finely chopped green chillies, onion, coriander& curry leaves, asafetida, turmeric powder, rice flour and salt and thoroughly mix everything ( don’t add water , the moisture in the onion and plantain florets will be enough to mix). In the mean time, heat oil in  a flat bottomed kadai. Make small balls out of the vada mixture. Flatten these balls , thinner than “AamaiVadai”and fry in slow fire, flip the vadai on both sides till vadais turn into golden brown colour.

Mouth watering VazhaippooVadai is ready to eat.

This can be taken as evening snack along with tea especially during rainy season (adai mazhai kaalam) or can be a great accompaniment for any variety rice, sambar rice, curd rice or for rasanjaadham!!

Note :

1. The colour and crispiness of the vadai will be decided by the oil temperature. So we need to fry these  vadais in medium flame.
2. Care should be taken while grinding kadalai paruppu, it should be coarsely ground without adding water.
3. You can keep the cleaned plantain florets (without washing) in an air tight container in the fridge for about 2 to 3 days. Whenever, you need the florets  you can wash and chop as per your recipe.