Easy quick pakodas (bread fritters)

There's nothing quite like chatting with old friends. It takes you to the giggly madness of your youth. You feel like a teenager again. You mull over the elements of the conversation for a whole day. And your worries and cares just fall away.
That's the way I felt yesterday. I was fast asleep at 9:30 PM (believe it or not) with a viral fever afflicted husband and a dead tired kid for company, when out of the blue my phone flashed to life. Since I get these emergency calls at all times of the day and night from sick friends with sick cranky babies in urgent need of advice, I got up thinking it was one of them. I was expecting the anxious whisper and instead I heard a happy chatty voice at the other end who was shocked that I was asleep at this unheard of time.
A smile on my face and an uncontrollable giggle in my voice I chatted with my friend Poonam in what was for me the middle of the night. The only evidence of that chat in the morning was my buoyant mood and my goofy smile (I can tell you my husband was delighted not to encounter Mrs Grumpy Face this morning)
We talked about everything and nothing in particular. Of course we chatted about cooking because she is crazy about baking.
So today's recipe is dedicated to the chai and pakoda meetings with old friends


When I started cooking, I once ambitiously attempted paneer pakodas, and promptly fell flat on my face. The batter was too runny, I kept adding more and more besan and ended up with a huge quantity of gooey mess. The sticky mess stuck to my fingers rather than the paneer. The paneer and the batter that eventually did make themselves to the kadhai got fried seperately.

Thank God for forgiving hungry post graduate trainees (my guests that evening) they just ate that nonsense that I served up as pakoras.

Well many such disasters later I discovered that bread pakoras are the most forgiving and they were the only ones I attempted then for many many years.

Bread pakoda - the easiest pakoda in the world

1. Take 2 slices of bread. The older the bread the better it is because fresh soft bread tends to disintegrate when shoved  into batter.
2. Cut the bread neatly into rectangles with a serrated edged knife taking care not to mutilate it. The rectangles can be cut up further to make squares if you want smaller pakodas. Triangles however are best not attempted because they are too delicate for clumsy hands like mine.
3. In a bowl take  5 tablespoons of besan (gram flour) and add some salt to taste and mix it into the dry besan. It is best to taste the batter after you add the salt to make sure it's just right. Be careful because bread usually is salty and its easy to overdo the salt.
4. Add water measuring it out with a tablespoon. Pouring from the bottle is dangerous. Add about 5 tablespoons of water and make a paste then keep diluting the paste with a tablespoon of water at a time until the paste becomes thinner. The good thing about bread pakora is that it manages to hold batter of any consistency easily so you needn't worry too much about the consistency - it's ok if its runny and its ok if it's thick.
5. Heat a cup of oil in a kadhai. Test if the oil is hot enough by dropping a blob of batter into the oil - the blob should come up to the surface immediately. Anyway the happy bread pakoda gets fried even if the oil is not at the right temperature - so don't worry
6. Dip the bread slices in the batter and turn them around to coat them with the batter.
7. Drop these batter coated bread pieces into the oil quickly otherwise the bread will break if it is moistened with batter for too long.
8. Fry the pakodas to a golden brown colour, turning over to see that both sides are done.

Voila!!!! the pakodas are done. Get some chai and some good friends and settle down to some reviving gossip.
C ya!