Dahi Vadas

[Suvir Saran]

“Put those two on the table, will you?” Kabir said, gesturing towards a dish of potatoes swimming in a thin tomato sauce, and another that held stir-fried butternut squash speckled with black mustard seeds. Then he picked up a saucepan of something that looked like small doughnuts sailing in a white yogurt sauce and began plopping the “doughnuts” into a round serving dish. He poured the sauce over them, covering them completely.

“Don’t put those out yet”, he said, rummaging around in the cabinet to the left of the stove. The cabinet was crammed with jars of spices. He pulled out several jars and unscrewed the lids.

“What are they?”

“They’re lentil dumplings. Now watch this.”

He took a spoonful of a tan colored powder out of one of the jars and used the spoon to draw parallel lines of the powder over the yogurt. When he couldn’t add any more lines to the direction in which he was working, he picked up a jar of orange-red chili powder and began making parallel lines of it to cross the cumin. I sat down to watch him. He had a lot more patience than I did for this kind of tedious work.

He spent the next five minutes covering the whole of the yogurt with colored geometric designs made from the cumin and chili powders, a dark brown powder that he said was garam masala, chopped cilantro, a brown tamarind-date chutney and a green mint chutney. The decoration reminded me of sand paintings of mandalas I’d seen made by Tibetan monks.

“It’s not just for looks,” Kabir said, standing back to appraise the finished work. “The spices and herbs and chutneys add flavor to the dish, too.”

[Suvir Saran]

Where do you find your favorite version of Dahi Vadas?

Do you ever make them at home? Have a favorite recicpe?

What do you garnish the vadas with?

Do you add sugar to your yogurt?

[Haggis]

Is this the same dish that I have come to know as dahi bhalla? Certainly sounds like it. Is it one of those situations where the same dish is known by two different names, such as palak paneer and saag paneer? I enjoy this dish very much. Do you happen to know if Friday is a traditional day to serve it? Once, when deciding where to eat in Jackson Heights on a Friday, I noticed that three or four of the 74th Street joints offered dahi bhalla on their buffet that day. Is this dish considered a chaat? My instincts tell me it is chaat-like, but I have actually even seen it on an Indian menu as a condiment, of all things! That's right, some place (forget where now) offered dahi bhalla for $1.50 under their condiment section. However you categorize it, it is a beautiful dish to behold, and tastes sublime.

[anil]

Is this the same dish that I have come to know as dahi bhalla? Certainly sounds like it. Is it one of those situations where the same dish is known by two different names, such as palak paneer and saag paneer? ....

Yes, Bhalles; the term is used by Punjabis mostly for vadas. Paalak paneer is a subset of saag paneer. One could use many other greens to make saag, whereas paalak is spinach.

Hope this helps

[Haggis]

Yes, Anil, it was helpful. Thanks for the confirmation about vadas/bhalla, and for the clarification regarding palak and saag. All this time I thought they were perhaps two different regional words for spinach. Now I know that when I once made a saag paneer with kale substituted for the spinach, that I was still being true to the name of the dish. Do you, or anyone else, know if there is any Indian restaurant in the NYC area which uses a green other than spinach in any of the preparations that are labeled as saag?

[Suvir Saran]

Bukhara Grill maks a great sarson ka saag. Mustard greens that is. It is superb.

I am sure there are other restaurants that have it on their menu as well.

I know Eric Asimov had reviewed a Taxi Drivers list of favorite Sub-Continental eateries... at lest one of them served Mustard greens as well. And also great Makki Ki Roti (corn meal flat bread), that is eaten with mustard greens tradtionally.