Ingredients:

• 1 cup – Sabudana
• 3 – Potatoes (medium)
• 1/2 cup – Peanuts
• 1 tsp – Cumin seeds
• 1-2 – Green chilies, finely chopped
• 1 tsp – Ginger, finely chopped
• 2 tsp – Lime juice
• Few chopped Coriander leaves
• 1.5 tsp – Sugar or as required
• 3 tbsp – Buckwheat flour
• 3 cups – Oil for frying
• 4 tbsp – Curd
• 1 cup – Rice
• 2 nos – Red chilly dry
• 1 tspn – Mustard
• 1 tspn – Salt
• 1 sprig – Curry leaves
• 3 nos – Roasted papad
• 1 tbsp – Roasted horse gram
• 1 tspn – sev and chopped coriander for garnish

Method:

1. Soak the sabudana or sago in water for 5 hours at least or overnight. I soaked the sago overnight and in the morning they had become very soft.
2. Drain of all the water completely from the soaked sabudana.
3. Boil the potatoes. Peel and then mash them. Mix the mashed potatoes and sabudana together.
4. On a skillet or in a shallow pan, roast the groundnuts/peanuts till they become crisp. Cool and then coarsely powder in a mortar-pestle or in a dry grinder.
5. Add the peanuts, rock salt, sugar, ginger, green chillies, coriander leaves and lemon juice. Mix the entire mixture well.
6. Now take some portion of the mixture in your hands and shape them into round vadas or patties.
7. Deep fry the sabudana vadas till golden brown.
8. Serve sabudana vada with sweet curd/yoghurt or green chutney.
9. You could also serve sabudana vadas with tomato sauce.
10. For curd rice mix steamed rice with curd, chopped ginger, seasoning and temper with mustard seeds, curry leaves and red chilly.
11. Place the wadas on the molded rice pyramids, drizzle with mint, curd and tomato chutney.
12. Place the roasted rolled papads on top of the wadas by pasting it with some curd.
13. Drizzle with roasted horse gram dal, sev and chopped coriander.
14. Chefs Tip 1: The water needs to be drained well. Use a seive or a colander to drain the water. The sabudana vada mixture is dry. If there is moisture in the mixture, then you won’t get a proper shape of the sabudana vadas and they will become soggy from inside.
15. Tip 2: The oil has to be neither too hot nor warm. If its hot, the sabudana vadas will burn from outside leaving the inside portion uncooked. If warm, the vadas will absorb oil, making the sabudana vadas loaded with oil.
16. Recipes courtesy: Chef Jerson Fernandes, Corporate Chef, Berggruen Hotels.

Recipe courtesy of Chef Jerson Fernandes