Sweet and Sour Dahi Vada- Bloggoversary 300th Post

Today is the day! "Good Food Recipes" was officially born a year ago! I can’t believe it’s been a year– although sometimes it feels like it’s been longer. LOL Not in a bad way, though. My blog journey begins with a very traditional recipe Bobbattu (Sweet Paratha) and it continues successfully with this 300th post which is my favorite sweet and sour Dahi vada. I thank and reward all this credit to my fellow bloggers, friends and family members especially my hubby for all your encouraging words and support.

 Let me take a minute to tell about the achievements of this blog with a pride!

What are the achievements so far…

• Ranked 88 in Blog top sites.
• More than 3,00,000 visitors from all over the world.
• I am very thankful for the 179 Blog followers.
• A total of 300 delicious recipe posts.
• Conducting events such as Healthy Snacks and Quick and Easy Recipes where this blog got a huge response. 
• Got many followers on Facebook Page, google plus and Twitter.
• A total of 2795 wonderful comments on all posts.
• Daily more than 1000 visitors which include 500 new visitors from various countries.
• Very fortunate to find many friends in bloggywood.
• Participated and won many give aways including Slicer, hair curler strand, gift certificates, photo frame, Gift from gift.com, famous painting and awards and rewards.
• Many Guest Post. (Guest Article by Leroy Templeton)
• Review of many websites such as smoorgie, etc.,
• Featured on Foreigndomestic.com

Things to look forward to …

• Reviews, reviews, and more reviews (of course).
• Guest posts, interviews, and other blog tour posts.
• Authors from A-Z from different blogs.
• Giveaways.

Now coming to the recipe sweet and sour dahi vada, this is one of my favorite breakfast meal. When ever I have this lip smacking food, I remember gokul chat. Gokul chat is one of the most popular fast food center (Chat Bandar ghar) in Hyderabad, India where me and my mother stop by when every time we go shopping, I always used to have this wonderful dahi vada especially in summer and my mother used to have dahi puri. When I visit India I would definitely visit gokul chat and enjoy my favorite food with my mom. Now coming to the recipe

Ingredients
Urad dal/ Minapa pappu- 2cups
Dahi/curd/yogurt-2cups
grated fresh coconut-2tbsp
salt to taste
red chili powder pinch
Chat masala-1tea spoon
Sugar-1tea spoon
Fennel seeds-1/2tbsp
Cherry raisins-1tbsp
Onion finely chopped-2tbsp
Parsley dry or fresh cilantro-1/2tbsp
Oil for deep fry

Directions:

• Soak 1 cup of Urad dhal for at least for 6 hrs.
• Drain the water and grind it in a blender to a smooth batter with a thick consistency.
• Use very little water in the course of blending.
• More water will ruin the vadai shape & texture
• At the end, add 1/2 ts pepper powder, salt per taste and grind again.
• Add shredded coconut and beat the batter with hand or blender for about 2 min on low speed to aerate your batter.
• TIP: To find if the batter is well aerated, just drop little batter in a bowl of water. If it sinks, batter needs to be aerated. If it floats, it is well aerated.
• Aeration will yield fluffy soft vadas.
• Heat a pan of oil - keep it in medium flame
• To check if the oil is hot enough, drop a small pea sized batter in the hot oil - if it sizzles and rises to the top immediately, oil is good to go
• Wet your hands in cold water, gently scoop the batter with your bare fingers, and roll up into a ball and gently make a hole using your thumb, drop it into the oil
• In couple of minutes, flip the vada upside down and let it fry until both sides turn golden brown
• Drop the vadas minimum 3 in a batch and using a perforated laddle scoop them all onto a paper towel to absorb the excess oil
• Serve hot with chutney
• To keep the vadas crisp for few hours, you may either preheat the oven to 250 degrees - turn it off and keep the vadas in or just keep cover the hot oil pan (after frying) with plate and place the vadas over the plate and cover up with another plate.

Now for preparing Dahi Vada

Take a flat conatiner as shown and place 4 vadas on it. Take curd/yogurt in a bowl and beat well, add it on top of vada and sprinkle salt, chat masala, red chili powder, sugar, parsely, fennel seeds and raisins on top of it. Refrigerate for 30min and enjoy. (I could not wait that long, just smacked immediately). Hope you like it too!