Pakoras

The other day I was talking to a colleague about Indian food and stuff and he mentioned Pakoras.. Now that's always been my weakness, right. In India, you think about rains and you just have to think about hot steaming pakoras with chai... Its not likes its rained anytime recently in Adelaide... But hey there's no such thing as fixed time and place for pakoras..

Mum's a pro when it comes to pakoras. And I never had to imagine ever attempting to make this myself. I'm terrified when it comes to deep frying anything - best avoided but clumsy people such as myself.

Posting pictures from when I'd tried making them. Key ingredient - chick pea flour aka Besan.

These are made of chick pea flour and onions:



Notice how dark they are.. That's my cooking skills... you really need to be as good as me to get them all just as black! Nah.. they're just burnt.

So I tried again.. this time substituting onion with cabbage. Why cabbage you ask? well because we'd visited the Adelaide Central Market and got home this giant cabbage that I honestly had no idea what to do with...

It was a disaster with cabbage! It doesn't stick as well as onion rings do, just goes all limp and swims wherever in the oil... So I added a bit more flour and a just a little bit of water for binding. And then it was workable.. The outcome - amazing stuff (though I say this myself ...lol)! Might try doing this again sometime if I get to invite him over.



I was impressed.. And goes great with masala chai.

Guidance - as always - by my trusted book of recipes - Humkhaas Paksidhi. The book is better than even having mum on the phone trying to tell me stuff! She just gets impatient after a while (when she's told me 7 times how to do something real simple: well simple in her terms, that is).. Now you know where I get all my remarkable traits from.


I think I'll post the exact recipe sometime soon from 'The Book'.