Growing up, it took FOREVER for me to like Indian food, even though my father is from India. The spices typically used in dishes, like cumin or cardamom, were intensely flavored and overwhelming to my young palate, so when it came to eating, I stuck to breads. Breads seemed safe enough.
My Indian aunts would always make stacks and stacks of various flatbreads they would brush with ghee (clarified butter Indians use to cook) and store in stainless steel containers. Typically I found softly, slightly oily fried puri bread. Occasionally I’d stumble across spicy tepla, or fenugreek-stuffed roti bread. Sometimes it was a crap shoot and I’d land upon a stack of dry as cardboard roti bread, which I still loathe to this day.
But sometimes, sometimes I’d hit the kid jackpot and find vedimi bread. It was always a shock to my young tastebuds, the rush of sugar, the sweet shredded coconut and hauntingly fragrant cardamom pods…it took me years to learn their name and even longer to discover what was in that the magical sweet mix in the center of the bread.
The beautiful, sweet innards of my vedimi.
Vedimi, or puran puri as it is known in other parts of India, is a flat bread stuffed with a sweetened pulse (typically toor dal/split pigeon peas or channa dal/ chickpeas) traditional Indian flavorings like cardamom and nutmeg. Vedimi is usually made during popular Indian holidays, like Diwali (the Indian New Year, celebrated in October or November every year) and Holi (the festival of color and welcoming of spring).
I learned this particular recipe from my Lila Khakee (my aunt), and it has been a family favorite for years. The recipe itself is simple, but time consuming because it takes FOREVER to cook the filling. This is one of those recipes you make on a lazy Sunday afternoon so you don’t have to make it again for a while. And bonus–you can freeze the balls of filling and defrost them when you feel like a fresh piece of vedimi.
The flatbread is made from a basic puri bread base and is incredibly quick to throw together, ready in less than five minutes.
The dough for the roti, pre-portioned into small balls for easy rolling.
The pulse of choice is cooked with water in a pressure cooker, mashed into a paste, sweetened and seasoned,
The mashed, sweetened and seasoned split pigeon peas for the filling.
cooled, and rolled into balls for the filling.
The cooled balls of filling for the vedimi.
The puri dough is then rolled out,
My Lila Khakee rolling out the roti dough like a pro.
wrapped around the sweet ball of filling like dumpling,
The rolled roti dough wrapped around the sweet vedimi filling. The dough is pinched at the top to close it like a dumpling.
rolled out again,
Rolling out the stuffed roti dough.
and cooked on griddle.
Cooking the vedimi on a griddle.
Before storing, the bread is always brushed with ghee. This helps keep the bread moist for storage.
The finished vedimi, glistening with ghee!
I love to enjoy my vedimi with a freshly simmered cup of my family chai masala tea, sweet and milky as can be. Hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do!
~LTG!
Recipe: Trivedi Family Vedimi / Puran Puri Recipe
Summary: A sweetened-pulse-stuffed flatbread from the Indian state of Gujarat
Ingredients
- Filling
- 2 cups of toor dal (split pigeon peas)
- water as needed to cook dal
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 TB elichi (ground green cardamom)
- 1 TB dessicated coconut
- 1 TB sesame seeds
- 1 TB poppy seeds Roti bread
- 1 cup chapati wheat flour
- 1 TB vegetable oil
- water as needed to bring dough together
Instructions
- Filling:
- Cook the toor dal in the pressure cooker with water. When cooked, smash the toor dal with a potato masher into a paste.
- Add the sugar to the toor dal paste and cook on low heat until the mixture thickens.
- Stir in the remaining ingredients, then place the paste in the fridge to cool.
- Once cool, roll balls of the filling roughly the size of a small lime, and set aside while you make the roti dough. Roti:
- place the chapati flour, oil, and a tablespoon or two of water in a bowl. Knead the mixture together.
- You want to end up with a fairly moist dough, but not a sticky dough, so add more water if needed to acheive desired consistency.
- Create balls of dough roughly half the size of the vedimi filling balls.
- Using more flour and a skinny rolling pin, roll out one ball of roti dough into a thin round, roughly 4-5 inches in diameter.
- Place one vedimi filling ball in the center of the rolled out roti. Pinch the dough closed on top of the filling so it looks like an Asian dumpling.
- Add more flour and roll out the roti to the same original size, 4-5 inches in diameter.
- Add to a hot griddle and flip three times, just barely cooking the bread. Place on a plate and brush with hot ghee before serving or storing.
Quick Notes
*You can freeze the vedimi filling balls in advance and defrost them whenever you need them. Will last around 3 months in the freezer.
Diet type: Vegetarian
Meal type: dessert
Culinary tradition: Indian (Marathi Cuisine)
My rating:5 stars: ★★★★★
Microformatting by hRecipe.
