I have a large number of Punjabi relatives and lots of friends, several of whom work as Punjabi translators in the media. (I also have a lot of Gujarati and Urdu speaking friends who not only feed me very well, but have also given me cookery lessons.) I am hoping that Jack and I will have pleased them in our attempt to make Onion Bhajis.
This is the first time I, that is we, have made bhajis (I have made samosas, saag aloo and all manner of curries and dhal countless times), and we followed a simple recipe from BBC Good Food to make sure we had a chance of producing something edible! This is the recipe we followed:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/onion-bhajis-raita
These were the ingredients we used to make the onion bhajis:
- 2 onions, finely sliced
- 100g gram flour
- ½ tsp gluten-free baking powder
- ½ tsp chilli powder
- ½ tsp turmeric
- 1 green chilli, deseeded and very finely chopped
- vegetable oil for frying (we used 2 litres)
The recipe told us to finely slice the onions and soak them in cold water…so we did maaan! I mean whether we understand the instructions or not, Jack and me were not taking any risks.
To make the batter, we sieved the gram flour and the baking powder into a bowl and then added the chilli powder, tumeric and a sprinkling of salt (we forgot to add the finely chopped green chilli, but as soon as Jack remembered we threw that in as well). We mixed everything together with 100ml of cold water to make a lovely golden batter.
We then drained the sliced onions and added them to the batter stirring to make sure they were well coated.
Then came the scary bit…hot oil. We had to keep testing the oil. The recipe said to add a tiny speck of batter to the oil. The first two times, the batter sank to the bottom of the pan and little bubbles appeared. But when the oil was finally hot enough, the third speck of batter we added immediately floated to the top and there were lots of bubbles fizzing away.
Then with two tablespoons we lowered a bundle of our battered onions into the hot oil. We let it cook for a few minutes, turning it over once. Now we knew what to expect, we heated the rest two or three at at time.
When we removed the bhajis from the pan, we sprinkled with some salt and placed them into a preheated oven to keep them warm.
While we were waiting for the oil to heat up, we were busy making our raita with the following ingredients:
- 250ml Greek natural yogurt
- a cucumber
- a small handful of chopped mint (we used half of the packet in the picture)
The recipe told us to peel the cucumber and grate it it into a sieve sitting over a bowl. We then pressed the cucumber to extract as much of the liquid from it as possible. The cucumber pulp we added with the chopped mint to the Greek yoghurt and mixed everything with some salt and pepper.
I have to say, Jack and I were very pleased with ourselves indeed! The bhajis were very tasty! We snacked on them all weekend.
We were so pleased with the results that we carried on and we made a batch of red onion bhajis with a garlic and mint raita. But as this post is too long, we will have to save the photos from our red onion bhajis for another day.
Did I ever tell you about when I was a contestant in a Bollywood Strictly Come Dancing?!!!
It is always worth watching Gary Mr Bean partying as only he can!
Caramel 