semolina and soy yogurt vada .... a fried yet healthy snack .............

A soy yogurt recipe after the soy milk extraction was all i wanted here . As i said in the earlier post that the soy milk can be fermented into yogurt using the diary yogurt culture . The process of setting the yogurt is same as dairy yogurt but the taste and texture is quite different . This is obviously not the kind of yogurt we Indians would love to have for dessert with some sugar or honey but it surely can be used wherever yogurt needs to be cooked or tempered. See this dahi aalu recipe which will tempt you to make soy yogurt at home . The most popular soy yogurt recipe in my household is this soy yogurt and semolina vadas ....... I have received great complements for this and a few friends have started extracting soy milk just to make this vada .

This is a great 'soy products induction' recipe for Indian families ....those who have hated tofu or any soy product in the first encounter , this one would be irresistible and would prepare the palate for more soy adventures...........

A very simple recipe and the ingredients are all such that a quick rainy day chai snack is very conveniet to rustle up.........

you need..
a cup of soy yogurt diluted with 1/2 or 3/4 cup of water
a cup of semolina ( or some more if the resultant mixture is too watery to hold together )
1/2 cup of roughly chopped onions
a few chopped green chillies
1/2 cup of chopped curry leaves
salt and pepper to taste
a couple of tbsp oil to shallow fry

to proceed ...

Soak the semolina in diluted soy yogurt and chop the onions and curry leaves in the meantime.

Mix everything together to make a binding dough but not very hard...

Make lemon sized balls and flatten to make a patty , shallow fry all the patties both sides till golden brown and cooked through.
Do not wait too much after mixing the onions and salt into the mixture as it starts getting soggy once the salt is added . So it is advisable to start heating the oil while you are chopping n mixing OR make the mixture without salt and mix salt separately for every batch being fried ( when you are making large quantity of these vadas )..... drain on tissue and serve hot with any chutny of your choice.

The onions remain crunchy if you make flat vadas which cook in a flash keeping the onions on the inside still a bit raw ..... the onions on the surface become fried and caramelized , curry patta crisp and the semolina textured interiors of the vada is soft ... creating a very interesting mosaic of textures and colors too......

Keeping the vada mixture doughy and not runny is the key to make them low oil as it does not absorb much oil ....so much so that the shell of the vada is crisp but insides are a bit like rava upma........i love it this way.

Nobody has been able to tell this is not made of dairy yogurt even if i tell this is made of non dairy yogurt , but if you have had soy yogurt before , the taste is pretty detectable . This has been a very convenient and largely appreciated snack recipe..... hope you all find it useful in your kitchen too...

Rava idlies can be made using soy yogurt too and that is something the weight watching people would appreciate more....