This is a simple and quick recipe for a beautiful starter or side dish.

I was cooking two very different chicken curry dishes for an evening in with friends. I thought that ‘chicken pakoras’ would just be too much chicken to indulge on so I came up with this alternative – Broccoli pakoras….and wow!!!!

Simple side dish that you can create whilst cooking your main meals.

Ingredients-

2 heads of broccoli (Standard supermarket size) with the florets removed

1/2 tsp of turmeric powder

1/2 tsp of chilli powder

1/2 tsp of ground coriander

1/2 tsp of garam masala

1 tsp of panch poran

1 tsp of salt

1 egg white

1 cup of gram flour

1 small bottle of cold sparkling water

1 large quantity of rapeseed oil for frying.

Method –

Place the broccoli florets in a pan of cold water. Bring them to a gentle boil and simmer for a couple of minutes. You want the broccoli to be a nice vibrant green and solid without softening.

After a couple of minutes remove from the heat and drain allowing them to cool for 20 minutes or so.

Once they have cooled transfer them to a mixing bowl.

Add your ground spices, panch poran and salt. Give the bowl a good mix. Allow these to sit for 10/15 minutes.

Add the gram flour along with the garlic & ginger paste. Mix the bowl well again.

Now gently add in the sparkling water. As you can see I’ve not listed a quantity or measurement as the batter mix is down to personal preference. Mix well whilst adding checking your consistency as you go. You want the batter to cling to the broccoli, if it’s too runny / wet it will just run off. If you add too much water by mistake you can always add more gram flour ( as I did 😊).

Heat the rapeseed oil in a deep pan. The oil needs to get to over 170c. You will need to fry these in small batches, if you overcrowd your pan all you are doing is lowering the temperature of the oil and they will eventually take longer to cook.

Cooking will only take a few minutes if the oil is hot. The outsides will crisp up nice and evenly.

Once they have cooked remove them with a slotted spoon into a bowl with kitchen paper as the paper will absorb any spare oil.

Thank you for reading my ramblings if you have.