Thursday, January 27, 2011

Milagu Vadai and lessons learnt

Milagu vadai is a special prasadham offered to Lord Hanuman. It is crispy, crunchy with a hint of pepper and jeera made with Urad dal. People offer this to Lord Anjaneya as a garland with belief that he will take care of everything. I used to do this often many years ago, as we jad a nice hanuman sannidhi, near our house in east London.

I was planning do something similar fora while and finally decided last weekend. It doesn't take much soaking and easy to prepare. My son and hubby had gone for basket ball practice and my daugher was napping.
I follow the  exact recipe of Mallika Badrinath and this is how it goes.

So, let's get to business

Get ready:
  •  1 cup urad dal
  • 1 tbsp rice
  • 1 tsp black pepper corns
  • salt to taste
  • Oil to deep fry

  
Go:

  • wash and soak the urad dal and rice for 20 mins.
  • Powder the pepper
  • drain water and grind coarsely with little water. Mixie/ blender is fine, just add little amount of water.
  • Add salt to taste and pepper powder to the batter. add salt at the end.
  • Heat oil in a pan to deep fry.
  • Add 3 tbsp of hot oil to the batter and mix well.
  • Make small balls with little water on your hands.
  • Use a zip lock bag and  flatten the balls thin like a thattai and make a home in the center.
  • Drop in the oil carefully after lefting them off the zip lock,
  • Deep fry till golden and crispy.

If the batter is runny you can add a little rawa/ sooji.

I made 2 vadais and then My daughter was crying in her nap. I turned off my electric coil and went to attend her needs. I was trying to put her back to sleep as I had to finish frying the vadai's. Suddenlt I heard some beeping noise and wondered, " why is the smoke alarm going off?'.

I rushed downstairs and was shocked to see that my kadai with oil was on fire. The flames were so intense that my over therange microwave was on fire and the flames were slashing up to the ceiling. I had not turned off the heat properly, How stupid is that??


I was in total shock. I grabbed the pan with a " idukki". put it out on the deck and put the fire out with water.
There was black soot every where and  I was just shaking. It could have been worse!

I heard my daughter crying in panic as the smoke alarm was very loud. I quickly grabbed her, called 911 and got out of the house.

This is what was left....


 No more vadai's... No more microwave! Even though the insurance will cover, the inconveniences I have created are....!

The lessons I learnt ( hard way) were..

1. Make sure you turn off the stove before you go on to do something, especially if you have hot oil.

2. Never use water to put off a fire with grease. cover the pan with a lid and that will contain the fire.

3. Have a small fire extinguisher in the kitchen which can be reached immediately.

4. Don't multi task, as we woman always do!

11 comments:

  1. Omg, sorry to hear about this Priya, happy u guys are safe...Take care dear..


    Love milagu vadai, feel like having some rite now....

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  2. Thank God you and your daughter are safe ...... I am sure we'll be seeing some Vada posts soon..
    Take care n thanks for the very useful tips.

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  3. Bad mistake but I really commend you for your presence of mind on how you put the fire out..glad to hear all you guys are ok ..

    US Masala

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  4. omg!! glad u guys are all fine..the same happened to my close friend and I can very well imagined the trauma!!

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  5. OMG!!Glad taht you all are fine...Take care..

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  6. OMG thank God you guys are fine..take care dear.

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  7. Thanks guys for all your concerns! We are otherwise good!

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  8. Wow, this reminds of an incident I faced when I was in USA. Thankfully I handled the situation with out much of ruins. That might have been a shocking experience. Hope you recovered..

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  9. So glad that you are safe! It must have been such a nerve-wracking experience!
    (I've managed to leave a small pan with water which boiled dry for over 2 hours on my range. Luckily, with no oil, all I have to show for it is a still useable, discolored stainless steel pan.)

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  10. I also faced many accidents last year...Its very fearful to read ur accident..Thank god,u all are safe...Even,it fired for me,when i fried the vadas in copper bottom kadai..keeping the hot oil in coil really made the oil to fire..Since the coil takes time to cool down..I feel the one more reason cud be ,u must have used the oil till the edges or in a overflowing form..Its very dangerous to cook on electrical stove...take care...

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  11. OMG, that is surely a lesson learnt. Thanks for your tips and so glad that you both are safe. Could have been a lot worse. Thank god. Take care dear and be more careful.

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