Bottle gourd, a light green cylinder shaped vegetable was unusual at my home just for no reason. I can count the no. of times we bought this crunchy vegetable when we lived in Bangalore 3 years ago. All I knew to cook was a simple stir fry and curry using this veggie.
But now things are pretty much changed. Food blogging mindset has made me creative and given me the liberty to use vegetables in diverse form. In line with my thinking and attitude, I came across a snack recipe using bottle gourd while glancing Indian newspaper online. It just caught my eye and tempted me towards these deep fried discs.
Crispy, crunchy bottle gourd nippattu has shredded bottle gourd, crumbly onion, green chillies and cilantro in it which are easily detectable in your mouth as you bite them. Blending all of these with rice flour and spices forms stiff dough. As you grate the bottle gourd, the cool veggie oozes some water, which can be used in dough formation. Once it is ready, simultaneously you can pat lemon sized dough in to a disc of 3 cm radius on a greased plastic sheet and deep fry in hot oil.
As you bite into crisp bottle gourd nippattu, the soft bottle gourd shred, crunchy chickpea lentil and green chilli will surely tingle your taste buds. You’ll crave to have some more and soon the plate is emptied. I witnessed the same at my home. 🙂
Bottlegourd Nippattu Recipe
Ingredients
- Bottle gourd- Small piece or grated bottle gourd - 3/4 cup
- Rice flour- 1 cup
- Onion- 1 no.
- Green chillies- 3 no.
- chopped cilantro or coriander leaves- fistful
- Grated coconut- fistful
- Cumin seeds- 3/4 tsp
- Salt- 1 tsp
- Split chickpea lentil chana dal - 2 tsp
- Cooking oil- Enough for deep frying
Instructions
Preparation
- Peel the bottle gourd skin and scoop out the seeds if any. Then grate the bottle gourd kernel, chop onion and green chillies in to small pieces. Set them aside till use.
- Soak split chickpea lentil in some water for around 15 minutes.
Method
- Sieve the rice flour in to a wide bowl. Include grated bottle gourd, chopped onion, green chillies, coriander leaves, grated coconut, cumin seeds, salt and drained chana lentils. Mix all these ingredients with your hands, use water if needed and make stiff dough.
- Scoop lemon sized balls from the dough and pat on greased plastic sheet in to 3cm discs.
- Meanwhile heat oil in a heavy bottom wok, when the oil gets heated enough ( check by dropping a pinch of dough in to oil, if the dough raises to the top immediately, oil is rightly heated.) drop patted discs in to oil.
- Fry them till they slightly turn brown. Turn and cook the other side as well. Remove the deep fried discs from oil using slotted ladle and drain on kitchen tissue paper. Repeat the process with rest of the dough.
- Super tasty evening snack bottle gourd nippattu is ready. Serve them with evening tea.
Notes
- While making the dough, add water only if necessary. For me, water oozed from grated bottle gourd was enough to make the stiff dough.
- Keep the greased plastic sheet ready before heating oil. Pat a batch of nippattu and while frying these, get ready with next batch.
- Be very careful while loosening and removing the patted nippattu from sheet. Turn the plastic sheet with patted nippattu facing down on your palm, so that it is released easily.
For me it came soggy was not crispy as yours, it absorbed lot of oil
Very sad to know that Sudha. I think the dough wasn’t stiff and thick. Thin dough leads to soggy snack that drinks lot of oil. In such case you must add some more rice flour.
This recipe sounds delicious… want to make this for my lil one but can i substitute red chilli powder to green chilly or anything else?
You can use green chilly paste Apeksha.