Zucchini Pakoras

I have a vegetable garden in my backyard.  The past couple of years we have been traveling in summer and so I have not been able to plant veggies in my garden.  We traveled this year too, but came back early enough in June that I could plant some veggies and still get a harvest even with the short growing season in Colorado.

Zucchini Pakoras

In my garden,  I have garlic, okra, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, yellow squash, acorn squash, and green peas (that never grew).  When I first started gardening, I made the mistake of planting four zucchini plants.  Little did I know that I would be harvesting more zucchini than either my family or my friends could consume.  Thankfully, I had some local charities that would accept fresh produce as donation!

This year (learning from my previous experience), I only have one plant and am still unable to keep up with the amount of zucchini it produces.  I can only make so much zucchini bread or pasta salad with fresh veggies!

Today, a friend of mine has called us for dinner.  I offered to make appetizers.  Since it is only four or five families, I made rasa vadas.  I also thought that this might be a good time to make a dent into my zucchini harvest and decided to make some pakoras but substituted zucchini instead of onions.  The pakoras came out well. 

Note 1:  Zucchini has a lot of water content.  Even though I squeezed out a lot of the water, since I made the batter in one batch, by the time I fried my last set of pakoras, the batter had become more watery.  So, the next time I make them, I will mix the batter in batches.

Note 2: My husband tasted the first batch I fried and said that he couldn’t really taste the zucchini.  So I added some diced zucchini to the batter for the rest of the batches.

Here is what you need:

• 1 large zucchini, grated and set in a colander
• 1 cup besan (garbanzo flour)
• ¼ cup rice flour
• salt to taste
• 1 ½ tsp. chili powder
• ½ tsp. carom seeds (ajwain/omam)
• pinch of hing
• oil for deep frying

Here is how I made it:

1. Let the grated zucchini sit for a while in the colander.  Squeeze out as much water as you can.
2. Heat the oil for deep-frying in a deep pan.
3. Combine the besan, rice flour, salt, red chili powder, carom seeds and hing.
4. Pour a teaspoon or two of hot oil on this.  Mix well.
5. Add the zucchini and mix well. (See notes above)
6. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil and fry on medium heat till the pakoras are crispy.
7. Repeat till all the batter is done.

Serve with chutney and garam (hot) chai.