There are many versions of Indian pancakes made with chickpea flour, gathered under the name of Pakora, a fried appetizer also served as a snack and street food. Today I want to let you taste the Palak Pakora, fried meatballs with fresh, crunchy and fragrant spinach.
It is not the first time I cook Pakora, the irresistible Indian pancakes made with chickpea flour. After a taste of mine Rice Pakora, today is the turn of a seasonal ingredient, the fresh spinach, which give life to colorful and super scented meatballs of spices and seeds.
Making them is really simple, you don't need to blend or pre-cook: just gather all the ingredients and shape, with strictly wet hands, these delicious spiced pancakes. To cook them, however, there are no loopholes, if you want to fry them you have to do it by immersion, to prevent the mixture from losing cohesion and you end up with a sautéed dish and no longer meatballs. Deep frying, especially in small, narrow and tall pans, allows you to obtain a result that is paradoxically drier than "two fingers of oil" in a pan.
If you want to stay even lighter, I invite you to read the recipe for Baked Pakora by Cristina – Good Food Lab.
ingredients for 8 Indian pancakes – palak pakora
WHAT
- 100 g of chickpea flour
- 150/200 g of fresh baby spinach
- 1 red onion
- 3 cm of fresh ginger
- 1 clove of garlic
- 2 tablespoons of seeds (coriander, cumin, black mustard, fennel)
- 1 teaspoon Madras spice (or your favorite curry powder)
- Salt and Pepper To Taste
- fry oil
LIKE
I gathered in a large bowl the onion cut into rings and then coarsely chopped with a knife, the hand-broken spinach, the seeds, the powdered spices, the peeled and chopped fresh ginger, the thinly sliced garlic, a pinch of salt and pepper. After mixing well, I also added the chickpea flour and a few tablespoons of warm water, stirring again to "bind" the ingredients.
If you are concerned that they may lose compactness during cooking, add 1 egg to the mixture.
With wet hands, I grabbed a fistful of compound that I crushed and then shaped into a meatball. I repeated the operation, always with wet hands, until I finished the mixture (in my case I got 8 palak pakora).
In a tall, narrow saucepan, I heated the oil (I use the peanut oil) and, with the help of a spoon / scoop for ice cream (like this one so to speak*) I accompanied the Indian pancakes in oil and fried 2 or 3 at a time. It will take 3 minutes.
I served my Indian pancakes with a squeeze of lemon (or lime) juice and a sprinkle of black pepper.
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