Chicken Pakora ( Murg Pakora )

There are so many recipes out there that it was quite difficult to choose one - where to start! After spending what seemed like hours staring at pictures of pakora's on Google image, this was the recipe for me.

This is a great site which I will return to time and time again I think, anyway, here is the recipe which I followed to the letter, recommendations for alterations after the blurb.

Ingredients

250gms Chicken - cut into largish chunks
1 Teaspoon ground cumin
1 or 2 Green chillies
1 Tablespoon grated ginger
1 Tablespoon grated garlic
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 Small cup chick pea flour
1 Teaspoon riceflour
1 Teaspoon coriander
1 Teaspoon red chilli powder
Oil to fry
Salt to taste



Blend the chillies,cumin, ginger, garlic, lemon juice and salt to a fine paste and stir chopped chicken through to cover. Place into a bowl and pop in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Prepare the batter by mixing the flours, chilli powder, salt and coriander with water,  heat the oil in a deep pan and dip each piece of chicken in the batter to coat.

Pop each piece into the hot oil and fry evenly until golden brown, drain on kitchen paper and serve.

Hmmm, well for a first attempt they did not go quite as planned so what went wrong. Looking at the recipe it called for garam masala but it was not on the ingredient list - no garam masala! There was no indication as to how much water to use and honestly I think that my batter was way too wet so next time I'll make it much thicker and stickier. Last but not least I decided to use a large frying pan rather than deep fry so they needed to be turned - big mistake - put these babies in the oil and leave well alone. With turning them over, they started to lose their batter coating.

So, a few lessons learnt here - but - they tasted lovely, I would probably up the spice mix a little as we like our food quite spicy but otherwise it's a sound recipe.
I served mine with a tasty raita - recipe to follow.


Debs