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Verkadalai Vepampoo Urundai

These are spicy peanut and neem flower balls, something between a chutney podi and a laddoo, but best served with a savory meal and not as dessert! These combine the peppy sweet-sour-fiery ingredients that might otherwise be used to make beloved Andhra peanut chutneys with the slight medicinal bitterness of neem flowers. A healing, protective summer seasonal special.
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Ingredients
  

  • 2 tablespoons peanut oil
  • ¼ cup Neem flowers, fresh or dried, plus more to roll the urundais in if you want
  • 2-3 red chillies
  • 2-3 cloves of sliced garlic, optional
  • ½ cup roasted peanuts
  • A small lime-sized ball of tamarind, fibres and seeds removed
  • 1 tablespoon jaggery
  • Salt, to taste

Instructions
 

  • Heat the peanut oil in a roasting pan on a medium flame and add the neem flowers. Mix and roast until they are barely browning, and follow at once with the red chillies, and garlic (if using). Reduce the flame to ensure the flowers don’t burn but the garlic does brown.
  • Now add the roasted peanuts. Roast until fragrant.
  • Add the tamarind, pulling segments apart to allow it to soften in the heat just a little.
  • After a minute or so, switch off the flame. Transfer the mixture to a blender or food processor.
  • Add salt and jaggery.
  • Pulse into a coarse paste, holding the mixie jar lid down as the peanut mixture will still be hot. Adjust taste—add more salt or more jaggery if you wish. Pulse again.
  • If you want to roll the urundais in more neem flowers, roast them in the same roasting pan with a little oil and transfer to a plate.
  • Next, transfer the peanut mixture from the mixie jar back to the same roasting pan. As soon as the mixture can be handled, start “catching” it into large marble-sized balls. If you’re rolling these in more neem flowers, do so now and press to make them adhere.
  • Repeat until all the mixture is used up. If it cools too fast and catching the urundais becomes hard, heat it gently until it’s just hot enough to allow adhesion.
  • Store the urundais in an airtight jar for about a week or 10 days at room temperature. If you want to keep them longer—refrigerate!