May

Home Cooking- Indian Feast with Crispy Spinach Pakoras

I decided to whip up indian food this evening using the recipes Vidhya taught me a couple of weeks back. Besides Moong Dhal and spiced cauliflowers with potatoes, I googled another fun dish to try:) Instead of serving our dinner with the usual crispy pappadum crackers, I made crispy spinach pakoras from Manjula’s Kitchen Blog.

Recipe makes about 30 pieces

Ingredients

For Batter

½ cup gram flour (basen) (I used chickpea flour)
1 tablespoon corn starch (arrow root powder) (I used corn flour)
½ teaspoon salt adjust to taste
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds (jeera)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon asafetida (hing) (I did not add this)
About 3/4 cup water

Also need

About 30 fresh spinach leaves (I blanched them in boiling water before dipping in batter)
Oil to fry

Method

Mix all the dry ingredients together: besan, corn starch, black pepper, cumin seeds, asafetida, and salt. Corn starch adds to the crispness.
Add the water slowly to make a smooth batter (batter should be thin consistency).
Heat the oil in a frying pan on medium high heat.
The frying pan should have at least 1 ½ inch of oil. To check if the oil is ready, put one drop of batter in oil. The batter should come up but not change color right away.
Dip the spinach leaf into the batter one at a time, making sure it is covered by the batter completely; wipe it from side of the batter bowl making sure batter is evenly spread over spinach. Then, slowly drop in the slices into the frying pan.
Fry the pakoras in small batches. The pakoras will take about 2 to 3 minutes to cook.
Turn them occasionally. Fry the pakoras until both sides are golden-brown.
The crispy, delicious pakoras are now ready to serve.
They can be stored for several days in air tight container.

Tips

If oil is too hot pakoras will not be crispy; if oil is not hot enough, pakoras will be greasy. (Mine was too hot so it did not turn out as crispy as I wanted it to be!) Taste wise, it was fragrant, not too starchy and reminds us of prawn batter crackers served at ngoh hiang stalls.

Serving Suggestions

Spinach pakoras can be served as chips with your choice of dipping sauce.
Spinach crisp can also be served as papdi chaat.

We want to give a shout out of Thanks to Luke from Hungry Ang Mo for featuring our blog and our favourite vegan lasagna recipe over at his weekly wednesday recipe blog post!🙂