Piyava Odi / Rice and Onion Fritters / Konkani Onion Vadi / Onion Oodi

I have been wanting to eat this dish since a long time now. This was a common item in our meal at my home in India. We would make a jars full of onion and garlic Odi or fritters and store them for the rainy and winter season. My grandmother would also make these in summer and send us these fritters. We also made "Same-tha-pan" or rice papads with sesame seeds steamed on banyan tree leaves. Steaming them on the leaves gives the papads a mild flavor of the banyan tree leaves. Potato wafers and many pickles adorned our jars in the summer season. Coming back to the onion fritters, ensure that you make it when the sun is hot. These need to be dried in the hot sun for 2-3 days until they are crisp and stored in air tight containers.

Ingredients
1 cup rice
5-6 byadgi red chilies
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
3 medium onion chopped into small pieces

Method
Soak the rice for 7-8 hours. Wash it and grind it into a very fine paste with red chilies. Put the paste in a heavy bottomed pan and add 1.5 liter of water to the paste. Cook the paste on medium flame stirring it constantly. Let it come to a boil, then reduce the flame and stir continuously. Ensure that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.
Once it is cooked it will be semi- transparent. Cook till the dough becomes thick and most of the water evaporates. Let it cool completely. Add onion pieces and mix well.


Grease a few plastic sheets with a mixture of oil and water. I ripped off two ziplock bags and used them as plastic sheets. I usually spread a plastic carpet in the patio. I then put a cotton chaddar or rug on the carpet and then put these plastic sheets on the cotton sheet. I kept spoons along the sides of the ziplocks to avoid it from flying around the patio due to wind.


Dip your fingers in water and take small pieces of the rice dough and drop it on the plastic sheets. The odi should be around the size of a dime. Make vadis with all the remaining dough and lay them on the plastic sheets. I tore up few of the good old ziplock bags and used them to dry the odis.


When they dry completely, store them in a airtight container. Fry them in hot oil and serve hot with rice.


Variations: To make garlic odi or garlic fritters, add 10-15 raw garlic cloves while grinding the rice paste. Omit the onion pieces if you are making garlic odi. To make plain Odi, just add around 1 teaspoon(or as desired) heeng or asafoetida to the rice paste while cooking it.