I love pakoras, the Indian snack food that is usually deep fried. I usually make them and freeze them. They are a great item to bring to dinner parties for an h’ors d’oeuvre as they can be baked from frozen fairly quickly. Anyway, although I love them, they are a lot of work to make, a lot of mess with the deep frying, and I dont even want to know the calories in them!
To make a long story short, I wondered about baking them instead, and when I searched the internet I found that others had had the same thought. Anyway, I just adapted my favourite pakora recipe from the cookbook The Dance of Spices (my most reliable and delicious of my many Indian cookbooks, by Laxmi Hiremath), and was I ever impressed. Not only do they taste great, but they freeze and also reheat well. Even better, the batter and vegetables can be made a sit a couple days in the fridge until you get time to bake them. I read that the batter actually ferments a little, and this improves the flavor.
I made the batter, chopped the vegetables (I used cauliflower, eggplant, onion, potato (the red waxy type), and fresh cilantro. I found that baking them in the tiny size muffin tins worked well. I sprayed the top of the batter with a little olive oil to mimic a deep fried taste. I find they need to bake for about 40 minutes, and can even be left a little longer depending on how crisp you want the crust. I have made these three times in the last couple weeks. They reheat well in the mocrowave and make a great snack or side dish at mealtime. There are many recipes for pakoras on the internet. Let me know if you want me to post one too.
Another good thing for many of you, pakoras use only chick pea flour and a little rice flour, so they are gluten free and quite nutritious.
