Spying some pakoras in my local India delicatessen, I pondered on whether Wild Garlic/Ramsons (Allium ursinum) would work as a replacement to the usual spinach. After all, once steamed it does resemble spinach in texture.
So using the remainder of the Wild Garlic that I had gathered along with about ten other wild edibles for my talk at the Budleigh Food & Drink Festival, I whipped up this Wild Garlic recipe. And they turned out a treat. Way better than the usual shop bought pakoras!
Ingredients
- 250g gram flour (chickpea flour)
- 50g self-raising flour
- ½ tsp red chilli powder
- 1 tsp garam masala
- 1 tsp tandoori masala powder
- 1 lemon (juiced)
- 300g potatoes
- 1 onion, (finely chopped)
- 100g Wild Garlic leaves
- 1 green chilli
- 1 tsp salt
- 500ml of sunflower oil
Suggested Instructions
- Dice the potatoes small, then parboil until just done, and strain.
- Sift the gram and self-raising flour together into a bowl, then add the chilli powder, garam masala and tandoori masala powder, and mix in well.
- Now add the lemon juice, then enough water to make a smooth batter. It needs to be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Then set aside for 30 minutes.
- Next blitz the Wild Garlic and green chilli in a food processor until it looks like chopped parsley. You can use a knife, but I am lazy. Then add this to the batter mix along with the potato and onion and stir in well so everything is coated with batter.
- Heat the sunflower oil in a saucepan. It’s hot enough when you can drop a bit of the batter into it and it starts gently frying.
- Next, drop tablespoons of the batter mixture into the hot oil, and cook for 3 minutes, before turning over and cooking for a further 3 minutes. Take out of the pan and drain on kitchen paper. Serve when cool.
Makes: Approximately 16 pakoras