Cauliflower Fritter/Pakoda

Dear Foodies,

You all will agree that we all love fried food. We try to avoid but sometime we love to indulge in it. I try to avoid fried food but once in a while I will make something fried. Most of the food I try cooking in appe pan (appam patra) but this time I decided to fry these fritters. It was very spongy and soft from inside and had a nice crunchy outer layer.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup cauliflower finely chopped
1 onion finely chopped
1 potato grated
1 cup fresh finely chopped spinach or 1 cube frozen spinach
1 tbsp coriander seeds slightly crushed
1 tsp fennel seeds slightly crushed
2-3 green chillies finely chopped (or as per your taste)
2 tbsp corn flour
1 1/2 cup besan/gram flour
Salt to taste
1/3 cup water or slightly less
1 small pinch soda-bi-carb/baking soda
Oil for frying

Procedure

1. In a large bowl, mix finely chopped cauliflower, onion, spinach, grated potato, crushed coriander seeds, fennel seeds and green chillies. Mix well.

2. In the same bowl, add corn flower, besan and salt. Corn flour helps out layer of these pakodas/fritters to crisp better. Add little water at a time to make very thick batter. The batter should look similar as the picture. The batter will soften even more in few minutes and you don’t want runny batter. Keep it on side for 5-10 minutes.

3. When ready to make fritter, add small pinch of baking soda in the batter and mix well. You can either prepare fritter in appe pan or deep fry. I deep-fried these pakodas. Heat frying pan or deep fryer. When oil is hot drop batter in hot oil with the spoon one spoon at a time. Make few fritters at a time, do not over crowd the pan. Fry them on medium heat stirring frequently. When fritter are cooked from one side flip them . When they are completely cooked from all sides, remove from oil and on paper towel to remove excess oil. You can see both method of making fritter in below pictures.4. When ready, serve while it is hot with hot and spicy green chutney or sweet, spicy and tangy plum chutney. The soft from inside and crunchy from outside fritter will melt in your mouth 😛 😛 . All the vegetables in the pakoda also cooks perfectly and fennel and coriander seeds gives wonderful flavour. No matter how many you make, you will end up with empty plate and I guarantee you will make it again and again!! My family had a good time eating it 🙂 :).