Masala Obbattu / Poli

After a week’s gap, here I am to introduce a recipe “Masala poli”. Yep, I heard your question. Poli a.k.a. obbattu, a traditional Maharastrian dish, basically done with sweet base. Obbattu / Poli are prepared at special and festival occasions, our ancestral origin is from Andra Pradesh, where on the day of Ugadhi (Telugu New Year) festival Sweet based obbattu / poli is famous. The meal course is incomplete without this.

This masala obbattu or poli can be made for a heavy evening snack. When I first tasted this, it was interesting with unpredictable taste. Making Obbattu is difficult in terms of making it with a prefect round shape. Practice makes perfect, so try and get to be perfect. Hard to prepare but at the end we get a tasty obbattu.

Ingredients :

Maida- 1 1/4 cup
Salt - a pinch
Cooking soda - a pinch
Oil - 2 tbsp

For Filling :

Potato - 2 medium
Green chilli - 2
Ginger - 1’’ finely chopped
Onion - 1 medium
Chilli powder - ¼ tsp
Turmeric powder - ¼ tsp
Salt to taste
Curry leaves - few
Coriander leaves - few

Method :

• Take Maida, salt and cooking soda in a bowl and mix well adding adequate water to it and make a smooth dough. It should be a little softer than chapatti dough.
• Now add 2 tbsp of cooking oil on top of the dough and cover it with a plate. Keep it aside for 3 hours.
• Pressure Cook the potato and peel the skin and mash up well.
• In a pan heat oil and add finely chopped ginger, curry leaves and green chilly sauté for 2 minutes. Then add chopped onions and sauté till golden brown.
• Then add the turmeric powder, chilli powder and salt. Mix well till it blends together. Then add the smashed potato to it and mix well.
• Finally garnish with coriander leaves.
• Once done, let it cool for a while and then roll out small balls of the filling. Divide into equal sized portions and keep aside.
• Take a plastic coated paper / Banana leaf and grease thoroughly on one side with oil.
• Now take a small portion of the maida mixture and patted by hand into a mid-sized circle.
• A small amount of stuffing is placed at the center of this dough, which is wrapped around the stuffing to make a ball.
• This ball is then rolled carefully using a rolling pin or your fingers tip to flatten it well into a large, thin circular disc shape.
• In a hot tava carefully lift the poli on it and roast until both sides are done and get a fragrant aroma released.

Masala Obbattu is ready to eat. :)

I pleased to submit this recipe for a cooking contest for “LGSS” – Lets Go Stuff Series on the theme of Potato @ Vatsala’s blog – Show and Tell. (http://showandtell-vatsala.blogspot.com/)

Tips:

• You could choose your own mix to make the stuffing.
• If the Obbattu / Poli batter is in excess, you could mix well with any pickle (my choice is mango pickle). Now flatten the mix and tava it like chapatti. This goes well as a side dish with tomato rasam.