Tomato and Aratikai ( raw plantain) Bajji

It's snowing here yesterday and my husband wanted to eat something very hot. He wanted to have some hot hot pakodas and that is when i decided to make this yummy tomato bajji. I fell in love with this tomato bajji when i was in Bhimavaram, a small town in Andhra Pradesh. These bajji's are very famous there and i decided to try them. It's very simple way of preparation, hardly takes 20mins to prepare. All that you need is good tomatoes.

Ingredients :
Tomatoes - 2 ( remember for this the tomatoes should be hard when you touch them. If they are soft, they tend to soften and break when we deep fry them)
Gram flour - 2-3 cups
Rice flour - 2-3 tsps
Salt - 1-2 tsp
Chilli powder - 1 tsp
Water - 1-11/2 cup
Oil - 2-3 cups

Preparation :
Take the gram flour,salt,chilli powder in a mixing bowl. Add very little water and mix all the ingredients without forming any lumps. Remember the batter should be thicker than the ordinary bajji mix. It should not be a thin batter. It should be thick.

Now take the tomatoes, wash them, wipe them with paper towel or a cloth and dip the tomatoes in the batter. See to it the batter spreads evenly to all sides of tomato. Meanwhile, in a deep frying pan, take oil ( oil level should be in such a way that the tomatoes should be immersed in oil).

When the oil is hot, put the tomatoes one by one dipped in the gram flour batter. Keep the stove in medium flame, and fry the tomatoes until the outer layer(gram flour layer) turns golden brown. This takes 10-15mins approximately. Once done, take them to a plate and let them cool for sometime.

Meanwhile you can prepare the filling for the bajji's.

For the filling :

Ingredients :
Puffed rice ( maramaralu, murmura) - 1 cup
Onions - 1 finely chopped
Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
Garam masala - 1/2 tsp
Chat masala( optional) - 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Lemon - 1 tsp

Preparation :
Take the puffed rice, chopped onions in a bowl. Add all the spices one by one and mix them. You can also add chopped coriander leaves. I did not have coriander yesterday and did not add them.

Final Preparation :
Take the flour dipped and fried tomatoes and cut them to 1/2. Remember you have to be very delicate in handling the tomato now as its cooked inside. when you handle it hard, it might even break. Cut the tomato into 1/2 and scoop out all the puree inside the two halves of the tomato. Add the scooped tomato puree to the puffed rice mixture. Repeat the same for all the tomatoes.

Now again mix the puffed rice mixture with the tomato puree( if you want, you can add extra chopped tomato also). Mix well with your hand in such a way that the tomato juice, and all the spices stick well to the puffed rice).

With this, you are 90% done with the preparation. Finally stuff in the filling into the scooped tomatoes and serve.

This preparation is so yummy, you can feel the crispness of the besan mixture deep fried outside the bajji and inside you have this spicy-sour puffed rice mixture. Though the procedure looks complicated, when you start making, you would be surprised that its so quick in preparation. For those, who never tried this, you should give it a try.

My husband absolutely loved this.

I had some left-over besan batter and made plantain bajji with it.