Sequestration Meal #146

Long ago, teenage me experienced pakoras for the first time in a restaurant that opened in my hometown that made a huge splash, because A) it brought Indian food to a medium-sized town in Oklahoma, a previously unknown cuisine to me, as well as a lot of other local people, and B) it had an actual tandoori oven, and that fascinated people.

They had a lot of great food but I never found anything I loved as much as pakoras. I had made them only once before, from a mix, and then later learned that the magical ingredient wasn't that mysterious--it was chickpea flour. They're essentially vegetables dunked in a spicy chickpea flour batter and fried. What would be there to not like?

Most places serve pakoras with a cilantro sauce, as was recommended by the recipe I loosely followed over at I Love Vegan. But I always had it at that restaurant, long ago, with raita. Raita is Indian cucumber yogurt sauce--sort of India's version of tzatziki--and it really goes well with the spiciness of pakoras. So I made the recipe from the Cheeky Chickpea to go with my pakoras.

It was marvelous.

I would make some changes next time. I'd halve the amount of red pepper flakes in the pakora batter, because even though I can handle the level of spice it was, I would have been able to taste the other flavors better without so much kick. I also think I wouldn't bother to seed the cucumbers for the raita, because mine turned out thicker than I really wanted it to be anyway, so some extra liquid would have been fine. And I think the potatoes would go better shredded than sliced. But I definitely see more pakoras in my future.