Tapioca fritters

To pass the time from the COVID lockdown during the weekend, I came across a FB video an thought would try it as I had tapioca in huge quantity stocked in the pantry since a while. Popularly known as Vadiyaalu, it is an yummy snack and great combination for pappu rice/sambar rice.

I soaked Tapioca at 8 AM before I started my office work on Friday morning. By the time I wrapped up the work at 4 PM, the tapioca was soft and soaked nicely as in the picture so you could squish it with a large spoon.

Various flavors of Tapioca fritters can be prepared. The plain ones are equally tastier too. The white fritters are plain ones with salt added. The green ones are mint and green chilli grind ed paste added to the tapioca and squished with salt. The Red ones are squished tapioca with red pepper flakes and a pinch of salt.

Add oil to the idli plates, put a tiny spoon of the paste and tap it with fingers to make it a flat fritter as show in picture. Once done, add water to the idli container, make it steam well. Put the idli plates in it only after the water reached boiling point and steam for 3-4 minutes. I opened the idli container at end of 3 minutes. Not all the tapioca pearls turned glassy/transparent. Hence, I placed the lid back and steamed for another minute. At the end of the minute, Remove the lid instantly and take out the idli plates from inside the container immediately. Let it dry/evaporate the moisture in the open air for few minutes. 

The next crucial part is to remove the flat wet fritter from the idli plates on to a oven friendly pan. Make sure you take a flat metal spoon and dip it in water as needed as you proceed removing fritters one by one. Then arrange the fritters on the oven friendly pan in a neat order and let it dry in hot sun outside. If you do not have much sun, let it dry in the oven set to "Warm" mode. do NOT use bake or broil modes as it will cook instead of drying. The fritters took me 24 hours total (12 hours of each day morn till evening) in Warm mode to dry.