Kandha vada aka odiyam is a tasty side-dish for rice. Kanda or kandha is elephant foot yam (senai kizhangu in Tamil). This tuber is ground with lentils and rice and deep fried in oil as spicy vada. These are eaten with rice with a bit of ghee or oil like kura. Accompanied by some pulusu. It is an interesting dish that is a favorite of everyone. Amma used to prepare these for lunch on holidays.

Though it is quite a simple preparation involving few ingredients, prepping kandha is a challenging task. Yam can cause mild to severe itchiness in the hands and mouth while handling and then eating it, which is attributed to the presence of calcium oxalate crystals. So we need to take some precautions while preparing food using it.

Recently my sister asked for this recipe. Very occasionally she does it as their food school is different from ours. I was sorry that I couldn’t supply her the recipe, instead I gave this long story😅

“Unfortunately I didn’t write it down in the days when I prepared them once in a while. For many years now I stopped making them and 2 years back when I wanted to, I couldn’t remember and internet had all different recipes by boiling kandha (trash 🙄; to each their own), that’s when I discovered that remarkable Palani swamy 😂 whose recipe was close still different.

From whatever memory was left, I gathered amma used to grind kandha with soaked pesara pappau and rice along with chillies, ginger, jeera. Quite like pesarattu plus kandha. Try it out and tell me if it tastes any similar 😅”

She felt amma used chana dal instead of moong dal. I doubted it and said we should verify with our aunts – Papa pinni or Bhavani pinni and she promptly checked with Bhavani pinni (whom she has never ever called before 😜) and confirmed it is chana dal. I felt it didnt taste like masala vadai. What a poor, unreliable memory!! Still with a ghost memory I persisted with moong dal. She prepared her version soon after and said they came out well.

I made them recently after a long time according to my version and they tasted really nice. I felt they tasted familiar – from previous times in my kitchen and amma’s.

Ingredients:

• Kandha – 2 cups cubed
• Moong dal – 1 cup
• Raw rice – 1 cup
• Red chillies – 10
• Ginger – i inch cube
• Cumin – 1 tsp
• Salt
• Oil to deep fry

Method:

1. Wash and soak moong dal and rice separately for 1 to 2 hours. Soak red chillies in warm water.
2. Clean and peel kandha taking necessary precautions (in note) and slice into pieces. Keep in salt water.
3. First grind kandha pieces without water into a paste and remove
4. Grind red chillies, ginger and rice into a coarse paste
5. To this add moong dal and cumin and grind to a paste (not very fine, not very coarse)
6. If the mixie jar permits, add kandha pulp to this, pulse to mix together and remove.
7. Heat oil in a kadai.
8. Add salt to the mixture and mix well.
9. Slightly wetting the hand make small vada like regular vada and gently release in hot oil.
10. Fry it on both sides until color turns to deep brown in medium low flame.
11. Drain the oil and remove.
12. Enjoy with hot rice (or millets like I am doing in the pic 🤠) and half tsp ghee or oil, accompanied by pulusu( thotakura pulusu here!)

Note:

• Precautions: Applying salt to hands, cut Kandha tuber into manageable chunks and peel using a knife. Rinse them in salt water thoroughly and keep them immersed in salt water for 15 minutes and then cut into slices. If hands itch even after this wash using dish soap and rub salt. Rubbing sour buttermilk is also helpful.
• This can also be made into attu on a dosa tawa.
• We worship polalamma on polala amavasya which is Sravana amavasya, end of Sravana maasam. In this puja main deity is in the form of young kandha plant or kandha dumpa (with some pilakalu or nodules)
• Palani swamy is a truly remarkable youtuber who has a unique style with his language and preparations. He makes very traditional Godavari district style items which is our style too. I dont follow yt for anything except music, but once in a while I will be forced to watch a yt video for an odd recipe as text based food blogs are declining