A little taster of what's cooking...
Onion Bhaji are one of my favourite things to eat, but they have to be extremely crispy on the outside and meltingly soft and yielding in the middle.
Soggy, oily bhaji with bits of raw doughy onion in the middle are sadly all too common and I find the only way to get them just as you like them, is to make them yourself. This is how I make mine.
I obviously start with one of our lovely Onion Bhaji Kits https://tastesmiths.com/shop/onion-bhaji/. I recently bought a julienne peeler/cutter from Lakeland and it’s perfect for adding other veg to these bhaji. I also use it for coleslaw which makes carrots strips perfectly!
Instead of getting 2 medium onions, get one medium/large potato and one medium/large onion.
Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Peel and cut the onion in half. Then thinly slice each half into thin half moons. Peel the potato and either use a julienne cutter to make thin pieces or thinly slice with a knife.
Mix the dry ingredients with just over 100ml of water with an electric whisk. The consistency should be like very stiff cake batter. I added a spare green chilli that I had.
Stir in the sliced vegetables and mix well with a wooden spoon until everything is coated.
Gently slide dessert spoonfuls of mixture into the hot oil and cook as per the instructions.
Serve as a starter with drinks or as a snack with a nice cup of tea!
Back due to popular demand – our Indian Street Food Box! The four kits that we put into this box make a fantastic Indian feast – Tikka, Timatar Masala, Onion Bhaji and Dhal. Below we’ve shown you how we rang the changes with the Indian Street Food Box – we hope you enjoy using them!
the UK, we don’t really have street food stalls apart from at Food Festivals. You can find lovely stalls that sell seafood, or home-made ice cream stands if you’re lucky at the sea-side, but rarely is there a traditional place for workers to go at lunch time to pick up some freshly cooked, delicious food. Fish and chip shops can be amazing, but it’s still not really street food.
The first places that I head for when I’m on holiday are the places where locals eat – cafes down side streets, markets, stalls – these are the places that give you a real feel of what it’s like to live and eat there.
In India, street food is cheap to make and buy, quick to cook (although usually a lot of preparation has gone into it), freshly cooked and delicious. It’s the type of food that people have eaten for centuries, with recipes handed down from generation to generation. With that much inside knowledge, it’s got to taste good!
People are scared to eat street food, but although it may look less sanitised than we’re used to, the people who own the pitches are there to feed local people on lunch breaks, so they want them to go back each day – they certainly don’t want to poison them! They’d very soon lose their custom if people started to get ill from eating their food.
We’ve collected together four of our kits that we think brings a taste of Indian Street Food to your house. We’ve used some of the kits a little differently, but have blogged about how we’ve done it so that you can do the same if you want to.
Timatar Masala – this is a very traditional blend of spices which is delicious with chicken on the bone or vegetables. In this blog, we’ve used the ingredients to make a gorgeous Spicy Roast Cauliflower.
Onion Bhaji – these seductive crispy nuggets are addictive made even better with the addition of potato – perfect to serve as a starter or with drinks. Make them smaller if you want to add them to a main meal. You can find out how to make Sally’s Potato & Onion Bhaji here.
Dahl – this is the most popular dish in the whole world. They say that someone, somewhere is eating dhal at every minute of every day. I love to make my dhal thinner (the consistency of a thick soup) so that I can dip the drier parts of the meal into it, or pour it on as a sauce. It brings everything together. I added a can of chickpeas to mine, which added another texture.
Tikka – you can use this marinade on chicken pieces, chicken breast chunks, salmon chunks, tender lamb pieces/chops, whole fish, fish fillets, paneer or boiled potatoes/vegetables. I don’t have a tandoor at home, but you can turn up your oven to max, drizzle over a little garlic butter/melted butter and then cook until they get a little charred here and there.
I added some lettuce, onion, cucumber and tomatoes to my meal, along with some of my No fuss Naan which I rolled into a thinner circle (rather than a fatter tear drop shape) before cooking in the same way, to mop up the lovely dhal.
The meal serves 6-8.
We’d love to see what you do with yours!