The quintessential snack of Mumbai.

The Vada Pav of Mumbai as everybody knows it, I was not too fond of this as child neither did I develop a taste for it till I got married and came to Mumbai as a young girl. We owned  a medical store and I would many times be sitting at the counter handling the cash,  with my few month old baby Aswini in tow, when my husband went to do a course at the Kalina University. The shop boys Ajay and Shankar would often go for their snack breaks and come back happy. Once I asked them to bring for me what they ate and from then.....the Vada Pav had a new fan, for life. Loved the whole rustic dish brought in a news paper roughly folded and there in it was the tastiest snack ever. No plate spoon fork, no presentation and all but just packet of pleasure!!! I can bet on the fact that all the strata of society in Mumbai, at some point in life would have had one of these.

1) Ingredients for the vada

4 medium sized potatoes, pressure cooked to three whistles and mashed well
1/ cup fresh chopped coriander
6 green chillies chopped
1 tspoon ginger grated
Salt to taste
Lime juice to taste
Oil, mustard seeds, asefoetida and turmeric powder for the tempering, make the tempering in about three tablespoons of oil.

For the batter

2) 3 cups of  split black gram flour  (chana aata)
Salt to taste
1 tspoon of coriander powder
1 tspoon chilli powder
A few carrom seeds roughly crushed in the palm
Baking soda as required and water for mixing the flour to make a batter

Some chillies slit in between and fried and sprinkled with rock salt, to bite into with the vada.

Pavs for putting the vada in.

 Some green mint coriander chutney and some sweet sour date tamarind pulp chutney to smear on the pav.


Method 
Take all the ingredients for the vada including the tempering and mix well, keep in the refrigerator for about half an hour, so it become easy to make balls out of it. 

Take the mixture out and keep the kadhai to heta with oil enough to fry the vadas. As the oil is heating you can ready the equal sized balls of the mixture, check if the oil is heated. Now dip each ball in the gram flour batter and leave it in the oil to make a golden brown  vada. 

For serving, take a pav open roughly in between, smear both the chutneys to taste, keep the vada in press abit and serve both the chutneys if serving in a plate. Usually the roadside stalls serve it with extra chutney and a chilli if you eat it there, if it is a take away then it is given with only  the chillies and some dry cococnut chutney which is made of dry red chillies, dry grated cococnut and garlic, dry roasted and made into a coarse powder.