This is the type of recipe which intrigued me about an air fryer - something spicy, relatively easy ingredients and not having to deep fry in oil.
I tried two types of pakoras - an Indian usually-deep-fried splat of thinly sliced vegetables in a gram flour (chickpea) batter and spices - Firstly, onion bhaji-type pakoras and then secondly, the same, with sliced potato added.
Onion Bhaji-type Pakoras
1. Mix together in a big bowl the following ingredients:
- 2 handfuls of chopped spinach
- 3 +1/2 'grey cups'* of gram flour (chickpea flour)
- 1 grey cup (70mls) of cornflour
- 1 tspn of baking powder
- Any preferred spices; I used 1/2 tspn of tumeric, 1 tspn of cumin, 1 tspn of coriander, chilli flakes to taste, salt & pepper.
(* = I have a grey cup which measures in millimetres. One grey cup is 70 mls full of flour! When I have time I must convert this to grams! It's happened this way because I was just cooking by feel and didn't weigh the ingredients as I went along!)
2. The mixed ingredients will be very dry. Drizzle in about 1 tablespoon of OIL. Mix.
3. Drizzle in a little WATER while you mix until you get a mixture which just about coheres so that you can spoon it into splodges. Add the least amount of water that you can get away with in order to get the crispiest end product.
4. Liberally brush with oil the grill plate of the air fryer.
4. Using two spoons, put splodges of the mixture onto the grill plate - I got six splats on each one.
5. Air fry at 200c for 6 minutes. Turn. Brush with oil lightly. Airfry for 6 minutes again. Depending on size and desired crispiness, you may want to airfry for another minute or two.
They turned out very well and tasty. However, they were more onion bhajis rather than the pakoras I'm more familiar with, so a couple of weeks later I made some changes.
Pakoras - Potato, Onion & Spinach
For these, I followed the recipe above, but made the following changes:
1. In the initial mixture, I included one very thinly sliced medium-sized potato (slices about no bigger than a 50p). I washed off the starch and dried them very well first.
2. I replaced all the spices with a big heaped tablespoon of 'chana masala', a pre-mixed spice mix you can buy in a box.
I aimed for bigger pakora splodges, so was only able to fit four to one basket.
They turned out very well indeed. The addition of the potato was good, the chana spice worked and the bigger size was better. Yum. We happened to have them on the hottest day of the year, and on the summer solstice!
EDIT: a few weeks later, I tried these in the oven - useful if doing a bigger batch, want to keep them warm and if you have the oven on anyway. It turned out well. Just put flattened spoonfuls on greased paper on trays, and cook for about 25 mins at 190/200c, tuning once, and brushing with olive oil.
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