My favorite street food Vada pav

Vada pav, alternatively spelt wada pao, is a vegetarian fast food dish native to the state of Maharashtra. The dish consists of a deep fried potato dumpling placed inside a bread bun (pav) sliced almost in half through the middle. It is generally accompanied with one or more chutneys and a green chili pepper.Although it originated as an affordable street food in Mumbai, it is now served in food stalls and restaurants across India. It is also called Bombay burger.in keeping with its origins and its resemblance in physical form to a burger.
Source Wikipedia

What is Batata Vada
It is a popular Mumbai street food snack. In Marathi language ‘potatoes’ are called as ‘batata’ and ‘vada’ means a ‘fried snack’.

Ingredients for making potato vada
INGREDIENTS

1½ Cups Gram Flour (Besan / Chickpea Flour) 1 Cup - 250ml
¼ tsp Turmeric Powder
1 tsp Salt Adjust As Needed
a Pinch Baking Soda
3 Cup Oil For Deep Frying
Water
FOR FILLING
5 Potatoes Boiled, Peeled
2 Onion
2 tbsp Coriander Leaves
1 tsp Salt
FOR TEMPERING
2 tsp Oil
1 teaspoon of ginger paste
2 Green Chili

INSTRUCTIONS
PREPARE potato FILLING

First lets start with the filling of the vada. Take the green chillies, ginger in a mixer and grind it to a nice paste. This is the spice mix for our filling.

First heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan on gas.Add finely chopped onion and cook on low flame (should not turn brown). Then add the ground ginger-green chili paste and saute it for a couple of minutes in low flame.

I have already boiled the potatoes and mashed it coarsely and kept it aside. Add these coarsely mashed potatoes to the pan and mix well

Then add salt and mix well. To the pan, then add finely chopped coriander leaves and mix everything well.

Our Potato filling is ready. Allow the filling to come to room temperature and make lemon sized balls out of the filling and set it aside

PREPARING BATTER

Now, lets prepare out batter. In a mixing bowl, add besan flour, and turmeric powder and mix well. Then add salt and mix well.

Then add water little by little and mix well and make it like a bajji batter. The batter should not be too thick or too thin. Just before you fry the dumplings, add a pinch of Bi Carbonate of Soda and a tablespoon of hot oil,salt in batter and mix everything well.
Keep it aside.Heat 3 Cup Oil in a pan. Take a large pot and add 3 cups of oil in it. Keep the gas on medium flame.

Add each dumplings to the vada batter and nicely coat then with the batter using a fork. Fork will help to have a nice coating than using our hand. Then using the fork itself, gently drop each coated dumplings in the hot oil and fry them

Flip the batata vada on other side and fry them in medium flame till they are crispy and turn golden brown outside. Remove the fried batata vada from oil and place them in a paper towel to drain excess oil.and Cut the center of the pav with a knife. Apply coriander chutney in the pav. Then put the fried potato vada in the pav. Eat vada pav with pleasure.
Ladi pav is a common food item in Mumbai and is used in many recipes, especially roadside snacks.

Note You can also add garlic paste in potato vada.