Necessity is the mother of invention. Though creationist may attribute everything to God. I just invented a plain jane way to make Sabudana Tikki or Tapioca Patty. The patty I made is kosher for Hindus observing Navratri fast and with some experiments and changes can be made non kosher. Without going deep into why what why not that lets get into how to make this simple thing.
For Kosher patty you will need:
- Tapioca, soaked for at least 2 hours, mandatory, half a cup
- Boiled or microwaved potatoes, mandatory, proportionate to tapioca
- Salt and Chilli pepper to taste, mandatory
- Kuttu flour or Buckwheat flour, mandatory, this will be the binder.
- Sliced Green Chillies, optional
- Kosher Oil or Ghee also known as clarified butter for deep frying
How-to:
- Strain tapioca or sabudana and make sure its neither dry or contains too much of water. I usually soak tapioca/sabudana over night and then just before I start cooking it I will put the soaked tapioca in a flour sifter.
- Mash the boiled potatoes, add tapioca/sabudana and mash further so that everything is “in sync”.
- Add green chillies.
- Add the flour, I added hardly a tablespoon of flour in 250 grams of the mixture I made above. Try to knead it into a dough shape.
- Add salt and chilli and knead again.
- Heat oil in a pan for deep frying.
- Take a small portion of dough, give it a small patty like shape.
- Deep fry and make sure you do not burn neither your fingers nor the patties.
- Enjoy with ketchup.
I added raisins while kneading the dough. Don’t know why and later realised when I will be deep frying these patties I will be essentially burning those raisins.
For a non kosher version you can use fine wheat flour and experiment with spices. Also, adding lime juice while kneading the mixture can add some tinge.