Onion and potato pakoras/Aloo arr piyajer pokuri

Tea time. Hah! It’s evening time and with tea what’s better than a plate of something piping hot served with it. The Indian palate likes the tastes of the deep fried pakoras, why alone pakoras, it can be garam garam samosas/singara as in Bengali or even some vegetable chops or cutlets or even…I can just breathe with these thoughts... Why me even others can go on naming so many mouth smacking snacks…hot and piping…to go with their evening tea.

Bah! It’s been a long gap and I’m back. Not that I didn’t cook or eat or had shut down my kitchen, but writing here, I hadn’t been doing for many many days, is it days? no months, no no more than a year. Not that I wanted to stay away so long but something else had held me back.

So what, again the key board has started going tak tak tak and …

It’s so simple to make pakoras. For my dish I’ve used:

Besan or gram flour: 1 ½ cup (sift and keep it aside)

2 Onions  cut into thin long strips

1 potato peeled and cut like (thin) French fries

2 green chilies chopped

Haldi ¼ tsp for colour

Red chilli powder ¼ spoon (add this if you like to feel the heat)

Salt to taste

Baking powder ½ tsp

Water for the batter

Oil for deep frying.

After taking the besan in a bowl added all the ingredients except the oil and water. I’ve used my hand to mix all the ingredients, that’s how I like. To this started adding water and mixed well to get a thick batter…consistency not thin and flowing and not very thick either…my friends have understood for they too make pakoras at home.

Heat enough oil in a kadhai/wok. Slowly in went the dumplings into the hot oil as I sang “you’r my dumpling dumpling hello honey bunny”.  Fried till it got the golden colour and then out they came onto the tissue covered plate. The same tune and the next consignment was done. Why do some jingles make so much impact on a person…don’t have an answer… And the end result you can see from the photo.

There was some dhania chutney to go with it. It’s such a pleasure in winter to gobble up such fries freshly cooked in the kitchen. I think you too like the ones from your kitchen. But, of course, sometimes those served by roadside thelas taste so good. Isn’t it for a change? Think about the hygiene factor ha ha ha…

© gouriguha 2013