Baris- dried lentil dumplings for the Indian Cooking challenge

Srivalli could not have chosen a more not-so-suitable month for us to attempt something that requires lot of sunshine. I was apprehensive to go ahead with the challenge of making Baris otherwise popularly known as Punjabi wadiyan, which when lightly fried and added to certain dishes just gives an extra taste to it, when the rains are upon us and the sun is playing peek-a-boo, even here in Ghana.

The recipe, How to make Bari - Dried Lentil Dumplings?
Bari or Badi or Barian she had adapted from Mamata's kitchen called for so many ingredients I thought might not be available in Ghana. That made me check out more web pages on this recipe. The ingredients were more or less the same in all of them, that I went looking for them in the Indian grocery stores, where I did find them.

The only hope was that there will be enough sunshine for just about a day to dry the baris. Then I read yet another recipe @ Kichukhonn where the baris were oven-made!

Please spare me repeating the recipe found in the sites ( many other web sites/ blog spots have the same recipe) and take some time to visit these two sites as well as my fellow members who took the trouble of writing them for you.

I have tried to do this in my pictures, so enjoy the visual tutorial.

I have made only 1/5 th of the recipe given by Mamata. I had some sunshine for few days in a row. But the baris do not dry to what is called bone-dry within a day. Well, switch on your oven and try baking them on a low temperatue for a really long time, say about 2 hours or more on 100 Degrees Centigrade, you have them ready for use that very day.

The spices that go into the baris are sure to make them very spicy and in the recipe I found that salt was missing. I have added salt to the dough and replaced the ash gourd with bottle gourd.

I thought I shall share with you a light moment...I instructed my security guard to keep an eye on the sun-drying baris. As I was speaking quite fast, he mistook that if the birds came to peck on them, he should allow them to have it:) He was confused why I came out every now and then, each time to shoo the bird away.

You might find some recipe posts that might be using baris to 'lift' taste to use the term Srivalli has given, coming up in this site in the near future.

They were some what similar to the kuzhambu karuvadam found in Tambrahm homes, that find their way into some kootus and vendhya kuzhambus, to 'lift' the quantity and quality.

These are easy enough to make and can be stored for a long time.