I love pakora and spicy onions. Homemade, like anything, is amazing, and you have full control of the ingredients.
Pakora Fiber Points 8+
Veg of your choice,
I used:
2 medium potatoes,
1 onion,
2 large carrots,
1 cup of peas
Other veg that would work: sweet potato, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, peppers
For the base sauce – you could use a jar of curry sauce – but you need to check the ingredients for sugar, artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, and seed oils, as these will not be good for your gut microbiome
I used:
1 cup of passata,
1 tbsp garam masala,
1/2 tsp cayenne (more if you like spicy, less or none if you don’t),
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground fenugreek
1/2 tsp asafoetida,
1 tsp ground coriander,
250ml bouillon,
1 cup chickpea flour (sometimes called gram flour or besan flour).
Instructions
Chop the vegetables into small chunks, add them to the slow cooker with all the other ingredients except the chickpea flour, and mix well. If your mix is quite dry, add more passata or stock. Cook on high for 4 hours. You should be left with a thick curry. I made this the day before so the curry could be left overnight to deepen the flavours.
When you are ready to sieve in the chickpea flour, use a couple of tablespoons at a time until the curry becomes a sticky paste (you might not need to use more or less chickpea flour).
For cooking, you have 2 options
- Bake. Spoon out balls of the mix on baking paper into even-size portions. Brush lightly with oil and bake around 200c for 15mins
- Shallow fry. Put 1cm deep of oil (olive or coconut) in a frying pan and heat on medium heat. When the oil is hot, spoon balls of pakora into the oil, turning after a few minutes when brown. Lay out on a sheet of kitchen roll to absorb excess oil.
Lime Pickled Spicy Onion Chutney Fiber Points 7
1 red onion
1 brown/white onion
1 large shallot (or a bunch of spring onions)
1 red & 1 green chilli
1 tbsp coriander leaf (fresh or dried – dried has less strength in flavour than fresh)
2 limes
Instructions
Finely chop all the onions and chillies, and if you are using fresh herbs, the fresh herbs, too. Leave the onions to stand for at least 10 minutes to let the enzymes activate so you can digest them more easily and feed your gut microbes. Mix them all in a bowl. Half the limes, squeeze the juice over and mix through.
The chutney is delicious with the pakora. The leftover chutney was also used the following day to bake my salmon!
