Potato Bhajiya

Woo hoo! Saturday is finally here and I can't wait for X Factor tonight (sad I know!).  Today has been quite a relaxed and chilled out day, usual Saturday morning of shopping and cleaning, boring I know but it has to be done!

I also now have a facebook group for whoever would like to join... please do as its going to be an amazing venture for me!  Its called ...... Bare Veggie (I'm sure you could have guessed that!).

Today for dinner I made bhajiya, you might automatically think onion bhaji from the 'Indian takeaway down the road', but these are actually a Kenyan snack (very famous in Nairobi), or if you eat enough of them in one sitting, it'll be classed as dinner! and trust me when I say once you start eating them you will not be able to stop, because they are just amazing.

They are best eaten straight from the fryer, when they are crispy and hot, with a spicy tomato chutney.

The difference between these bhajiya and the South Indian bhaji is the amount of gram flour used, you will see that these bhajiya's are only coated with a paste whereas an onion bhaji will be dipped in an ample amount of gram flour.

So, here is the recipe... Its actually really easy.  I would say:

Prep time: 10 mins
Cooking time: 20 mins
Eating time: gone in 10 mins!!!

Ingredients:
5 Medium potatoes (I like to use rooster potatoes, but you can use any floury potato)
1-2 inch of ginger (depends on if you can take the heat)
3 fresh green chilli's
1.5 tsp Salt
0.5 tsp Turmeric
1/2 tsp Sugar
100g Gram Flour (chickpea flour)
2 tbsp Water
Small bunch of Coriander - finely chopped

Method

First you have to make a chilli and ginger paste, simply take the skin of the ginger off and cut the chilli's into small-ish pieces, put them into a blender,with a little bit of water and then set this aside. It should look like this:

Next cut the potatoes into thin slices, I do this by hand as you can see in the next picture, or if you're brave enough to use a mandolin slicer - be my guest!  The slices should be no thicker than 2mm

Wash them in a colander, and empty the potatoes into a large bowl immediately as you don't want to drain all the water away, the potatoes should still have some water on them.

Add all the other ingredients: ginger and chilli paste, salt, gram flour, coriander, turmeric, sugar and water.  Mix well by hand (messy - but has to be done!)

This is what it should look like after you've mixed it, remember you want the gram flour paste to just coat the potatoes, you definitely don't need to add lots of water.

Once this is ready, you should fry immediately, the longer you leave this to stand the mixture will become too watery to fry and the batter won't stick on to the potatoes.

Next, heat the oil in your deep fat fryer, heat for approx 5 minutes over a medium heat.  To test if the oil is hot enough drop one of the bhajiya in and if it just sizzles then you can add a few more, if it sizzles and starts getting a bit violent - don't panic, just turn the heat down.

I would probably go with frying about 10 at a time (depending on how big your fryer is)

 and fry until they are a light golden brown and drain on some kitchen paper.

Eat immediately with the tomato chutney (recipe to follow)

If you find you've got a bit of runny batter towards the end, you can add some more gram flour and chop up some peppers into slices or bullet chilli's and mix with the batter and fry as above.