Karavadai: Rice lentils fritters, Nostalgic Memories of Thiruvanthapuram

Delicious Karavadai: rice and lentil fritters made with rice, lentils and day old dosa batter with curry leaves. Excellent with coffee.

 

 

Karavadai/Karavada is snack you can find only in Thiruvanthapuram/Trivandrum City, Kerala India. When we are young we will ask appa why Trivandrum became the capital of Kerala, even though Cochin is more developed and commercial city. His answer was that since Pappanabhan is lying here, it becomes capital, means because of Sri Padmanabha swami temple situated here.

 

When my dad was young, everybody would say that you need to study well so what that you can earn Pappanabhan nte chakram. Pappanabhan nte chakram meant the currency of the Travancore state with the bills having that symbol.  

 

I was born and brought up in that city, and I have lot of fond memories of it. Nowadays I mostly miss my mom and tasty food which I used to get from there. So I tried to recreate the food from my memories as much as possible. Until my dad’s retirement we stayed in housing provided by his work. After that we started living in Agraharamliteral meaning a garland of houses.

It originates from the fact that the agraharams have lines of houses on either side of the road and the temple to the village God at the centre, thus resembling a garland around the temple, closely related to   modern day condos. Every evening at around 3 PM, there were people who made makes snacks like parippu vadai,  Uzhunthu vadai bhaji, and carry them around and sell it house by house. Usual conversion will be going on like this,

Seller: Mami  evathauthum venama? Chooda attathil potathu (Means Aunty do you want anything? These are freshly made at home today. )

Mom: Thambi unkittae enna ellam irruku?  (Brother what do you have?)

Seller:  Enkittae parippu vadai,  Uzhunthu vadai bhaji,Kara vadai irrku? Enna venam Mami? Ellam ediukkatama, ( I have parippu vadai, uzhunnu vadai, bhaji and kara vadai, what you want aunty? Can I take a few from all of them? )

Mom would then ask us “what do you guys want?” We will always go for parippu vadai,  , amma will go for kara vadai , Uzhunthu vadai and bhaji, most favorite of my mom is karavadai and then Uzhunthu vadai

Finally the guy will sell us about 5 of each and he will be happy because of the business he got and we will be happy as we have a few goodies for our Coffee time snack. Amma used to makes very tasty filter coffee and we would all enjoy these treats.

Sometime back I saw this You Tube video of a local cookery channel’s travelogue where they showed the making of karavadai in a Tamil Brahmin household.

 I wanted to make it, but then I didn’t get time for it.  Last month when my friend Suja of Kitchen Corner Try It made it for a guest post it rekindled my Karavadai tasting memories. However, in her recipe she used pearl onions and chana dal powder, but the one which I tasted doesn’t have onions and chana dal powder, but it has soaked chana dal. I clarified the addition of onions in karavadai with my dad too. So I made karavadai according to the YouTube video recipe. Only thing I didn’t have in hand is doppi rice so used par boiled rice.

While goggling I found this interesting article about a restaurant in Trivandrum which specializes in selling and making Karavadai.  Nowadays he is selling one Karavadai for Rs 6 -7, (11to 13 cents) apiece.

Grinding par boiled rice is little tricky as it is requires water but if you add more water end product will become more watery and you can’t make karavadai . But less water means you are going to spoil the blender, I burnt my finger like that. I want to make murruku, since recipe says add water little by little. Yes I did finally and my blender told me enough is enough and I am going to stop working for you. It kept his word and stopped. 

 Grab following ingredients.

 

 

  You can make big balls too, however I gone for medium size. It is crispy on outside and soft on inside. Try to enjoy with sambhar    coconut chutney. If didn’t have time to make chutney or sambhar you can try with our Hunts ketchup.