• Measure and keep all ingredients ready. The karamani or black eyed peas is presoaked for a minimum of 6 hours or overnight. If you haven't soaked it for the said time, you can soak it in hot water for 2 hours and proceed with the recipe.
• Take together tuvar dal, chana dal and urad dal in a wide bowl. Wash it 2-3 times in water and drain. Soak the dals in fresh water for 30 minutes.

Let's grind the vadai batter

• Drain the excess water from the dals and black eyed peas. In a mixer jar, add the dals, karamani/black eyed peas, coriander seeds, chilies, coconut, curry leaves, ginger, hing and fresh coriander leaves.
• Grind into a thick batter adding very little amount of water. Do not grind it too fine. There should bits of coarse dal to give the vadai that crispy texture.
• Add 2-3 tablespoon of water first and grind, if its hard to grind, then add another 2 tablespoon water again and grind.
• Transfer the ground batter to a wide bowl. Add salt and mix it well with your hands.

Let's make the vadai.

• Heat oil in a deep pan. To check the readyness of the oil, drop a small amount of vadai batter into it. It should sizzle and come up immediately. Then the oil is ready for deep frying.
• Pinch small amount of batter, flatten it to a thin disc in your palm and slide it into the hot oil. Deep fry them until golden brown on both side. Remove with a slotted spoon onto a paper towel. Repeat the same with rest of the batter.
• Enjoy it hot.

Storing Suggestions

• Vadai tastes best when served hot. Any leftotver vadai can be stored in the refrigerator may be for a day. i wouldn't recommend more than that.
• Instead vadai batter can be refrigerated for 2 days too and deep fried when needed. It might turn sour if refrigerated for long.

Tips & Trick

• I personally prefer to make kunukku, bite sized balls. But amma prefers flat vadai. You can make both with these batter.
• If you ask me go with the kunukku, you will get a big batch and it would get over in minutes.