Cabbage And Onion Fritters (Cabbage Ambado)

Konkani style cabbage, onion fritters are called as cabbage ambado in Konkani. Cabbage ambade are spicy, crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and are absolutely yum! A great snack for one of those days when it rains heavily outside and you crave for something hot, spicy and crispy with your cup of tea. You can also serve these ambade's as a starter or a side dish for lunch/dinner.

Cabbage ambados are prepared by making a coarse rice based batter, which is then mixed with cabbage and onions. They are then deep fried in oil. Here's the recipe to make crispy, yummy, cabbage ambade.

Ambado means vada/pakoda/deep fried item in Konkani. Konkani’s make a variety of ambade’s. We make amazing taikile ambado - tora leaves fritters. Tora leaves grow only during the rains in Southern India. We make delicious marvala panna ambado - a kind of fritters made using colocasia leaves, again they too are available seasonally. Drumstick flowers and leaves (called as mashinga sanga pulla and mashinga sanga panna ambado in Konkani) are also used in the place of cabbage in this recipe to make yummy fritters. Ivy gourd leaves are also used in place of cabbage in the below recipe to make yummy ivy gourd leaves fritters (called as tendle panna ambado). 

Ingredients: 

• 1/2 cup rice grains
• 1/2 cup toor dal/pigeon peas split and skinned
• 2 medium sized onions 
• 1 cup finely shredded cabbage
• 6-7 dried red chillies
• 2 tablespoons of tamarind
• 2 tablespoons of freshly grated coconut
• 2 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh corrainder
• Salt to taste
• Oil for deep frying

Serves: 3-4

Preparation Time: 1 hour

Preparation Method:

1. Wash rice and toor dal well. Soak them together in water for a minimum of half an hour.

If you want to fasten the soaking process, you can soak them in hot water for 15-20 minutes. 

2. Once they are soaked well, drain all the water completely. Make sure there's no water remaining among the rice grains and toor dal.

3. Into a mixer/blender vessel, add in rice, toor dal, dried red chillies, tamarind, grated coconut, salt and grind into a coarse paste without adding any water. It's ok if you are left with tiny pieces of rice and toor dal, they add a nice crunch to the cabbage ambado. The batter needs to be very dry. 

The amount of water content present in the batter is directly propotional to the amount of oil the ambade's will absorb later on. :-) The watery the batter, more oil it'll absorb. So, keep the batter as dry as possible.

4. Transfer the ground batter into a bowl, add finely chopped onions and cabbage. To make these cabbage ambado you need real tiny, finely chopped cabbage and onion. Add just enough veggies that the batter can hold and mix well. The amount of onions and cabbage you add should not be too much too.

Make sure the washed cabbage is free of any moisture content. If not that water will dilute the batter.

5. Add finely chopped fresh corrainder and mix well. Check and adjust salt.

6. If you end up with the batter being little liquidy add some gram flour to it, to get it to the required dry consistency.

7. Heat up the oil for deep frying the fritters.

8. Meanwhile make small patties from the mixture. Roll a handful of batter into a ball using your hand and then slightly flatten it with your fingers.

9. Once the oil is rolling hot, add in the patties one by one and fry them on medium heat until they cook through uniformly. If the flame's high then you get crispy ambado with raw inside, so make sure you set the heat on medium once the oil's rolling hot.

Serving suggestion:

10. Serve these ambade's hot. As they cool down they tend to loose their crunch, crispiness and get soggy.

11. Serve these crispy, yummy, spicy fritters as an evening snack with a cup of hot tea/coffee.

12. Serve them as a side dish or as a starter, along with rice and dal (Dalithoy as we Konkani’s call it), that’s how we traditionally have it.

Find more fritter (bajo, phodi) recipes here.

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