Pakora or bhajiyā is a fried snack (fritter) found across South Asia. Pakoras are created by taking one or two ingredients such as onion, eggplant, potato, spinach, cauliflower, tomato, chili peppers, or occasionally bread and dipping them in a batter of gram flour and then deep-frying them.
Pakoras are usually served as snacks or appetizers. The word pakoṛā is derived from Sanskrit पक्ववट pakvavaṭa-, a compound of pakva 'cooked' and vaṭa 'a small lump' or its derivative vaṭaka 'a round cake made of pulse fried in ghee'.
The most popular varieties are palak pakora, made from spinach, paneer pakora, made from paneer (soft cheese), pyaz pakora, made from onion, and aloo pakora, made from potato. When onions, on their own, are prepared in the same way, they are known as onion bhujia or bhaji.
You can use the same ingredients for batter that I used earlier for Onion fritters on this blog, but following is also a good options for batter. I had so much cabbage in my fridge, that I wanted to use up with some variation away from the ordinary recipes, so I made these fritters and they came out pretty good. Here is the recipe.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 head of cabbage thinly sliced
- 1 red onion sliced
- 1 cup frozen corn kernel (thawed)
- 1/3 cup chopped jalapeno peppers
- 1 small bunch of Cilantro leaves finely chopped
- 3 cups besan (Gram flour)
- 2 cups rice flour
- 1 cup sooji (cream of wheat)
- 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper powder
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoon mango powder
- 2 teaspoon cumin powder
- 2 and half to 3 teaspoons of salt (or to taste)
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- Vegetable Oil for frying
Method:
- Thinly slice onions, sprinkles 1 teaspoon of salt on sliced onions and set aside for 30 min.
- Finely slice cabbage, chop cilantro leaves and jalapeno peppers and mix corn kernels.
- Mix all the flours, and all ingredients including salted onion slices.
- Add water and lemon juice to form batter to a consistency that you easily can work with your fingers to drop fritter in the oil.
- Heat oil to 375 degrees F
- Mix batter well with onions slices spiking out.
- With your finger pick up small portions of irregular shapes of batter and drop very carefully in heated oil.
- Fry the fritters until golden brown and crispy.
- Serve hot with your favorite sauce, Ketchup or Chutneys.
Pakora description source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakora
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-
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Recipe and Photographs by Surekha.
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