Hello all 
, It’s Janmashtami/ Krishna Jayanthi today. It’s the birthday of the Lord Krishna. I posted a recipe for “pepper vadai/ milagu vadai” yesterday for this occasion. But the main savory we do for this festival is the “Uppu seedai/sweet seedai”. I am going to uncover the “uppu seedai” recipe today here. I like savory more than sweet after coming to Canada. Wherever I go here, I see ample of sweet based dishes and get very few savory ones. So my choice was this and I did aval payasam as a sweet which was very easy to make. It took me very few minutes. Will post it sometime soon.
I was wondering why this recipe is being the main savory for this god. There should be a reason. Let me know if somebody gets to know it.
I always wanted to make seedai, but my mom used to warn me that it would burst easily. So I was staying away from it always. This time, may be I thought I was old enough to try it. When I told my mom today about making this recipe, my mom was watching me in facetime when I was doing it, and she was waiting for me till i shout “success!” after taking the first batch from the stove. She is so protective whatever age I am in. “MOM’s” are always the best. 
I have seen my dad and close one’s throw this “Seedai” on the air and catch them with their mouth to make it more interesting. When I put the first batch in the oil, I stayed away from the kitchen just to make sure that it does not burst and was peeping into the kitchen 
. But it came out so good :). I was so happy! I am not trying to scare you by saying all this, but be careful when you do this. May be in older days they used to have lot of stones in the rice which made it burst. These days its loads better and also if you sieve it well, it should be very fine 🙂
The correct way to do this recipe is to soak one cup of raw rice in water for two hours, dry them completely by placing on a cloth/paper and grind them. I used the ready-made rice flour instead. It was equally good. I have no complaints. 🙂 Let me know someone if you get to know the reason why we need to do the former method.
- Rice flour – 1 cup
- Urad dal – ¼ cup
- Sesame seeds – 1tbsp
- Ajwain – 1 tsp
- Coconut Grated - 2 tbsp
- Jeera/Cumin – 1tsp
- Salt – as needed.( I used 1 tbsp)
- Ghee – 1 tbsp
- Oil – to fry.
- Fry the urad dal for 2 – 3 mins.Grind the urad dal very finely. Mix rice flour and urad dal powder together, Seive them twice.
- Mix the ajwain, coconut,jeera,ghee and salt to the mixture.
- Add water little by little to form a soft dough but do not make it watery/sticky.
- Now comes the major step, hold a little dough part on your left hand on the fingers side like shown below. Take a tiny dough part, press them and release them by making anticlockwise directions on the right hand. And the first seedai dough is ready. It should not be hard or very soft. It should be in perfect texture.
- Make them all like the above step.
- Fry them in hot oil and take them out when its in golden color.
2. When you make the balls, make sure its not very hard or very soft. It will either break or it will be too hard.
3. Use unsalted butter instead of ghee. Or if you using ghee adjust your salt accordingly as ghee would have salt.
4. If you think the dough is too hard, add little ghee and water. Very little.
5. Oil should be very hot, or else it will break.
6. Roast the urad dal just for few minutes, which should do the job.
7. Try to use whole urad dal for this recipe. I used the broken one’s, as I did not have the whole urad dal handy.
