Savoury Waffle (Oil free Pakodas)

                  Savoury Waffle (Oil free Pakodas)

Monsoon is round the corner and nothing can beat a hot cup of masala chai with hot pakodas. I have been craving for my pakodas too but as I don’t do deep fried stuff at home I had to come up with an alternative.

 And I did come up with a solution, which was to make pakodas in my good old sandwich maker. After a few initial setbacks I came up with this recipe, which I am sharing with you all today.

May be I shouldn’t call it pakodas because if I do you would expect same level of crispiness as the fried pakodas, which you won’t get, but I still feel that my pakoda cravings were taken care of. So go ahead and give this recipe a try. If not as pakodas think of it as savoury waffles.

INGREDIENTS:

Besan (chickpea flour/gram flour) ¾ cup

Rice flour ¼ cup

One medium size onion very finely chopped

Green chili 1

Red chili powder ¼ tsp.

Ajwain (carom seeds) ½ tsp.

Kasuri methi ½ tsp.

Coriander/ Cilantro leaves finely chopped 1 tbsp.

Salt to taste

METHOD:

1. Take your Besan flour and rice flour (you can skip rice flour if you don’t have it, just increase Besan for same quantity) in a bowl, add water to it and mix well.

2. Add finely chopped onions, Ajwain (Carom seeds), kasuri methi, finely chopped green chilies, finely chopped coriander leaves. Make a batter which is not very thick because we will be putting two layers of it.

3. Wash and clean your cauliflower, cut into small florets and then slice each floret again. Like you can see in the picture.

4. Switch on the sandwich maker or waffle maker but before you switch on make sure to grease your waffle plate’s properly.be generous with oil/ghee, in greasing plates, it will help you.

5. When plates are hot spread the batter with the help of a spoon or spatula. Spread the batter thinly but completely (without leaving any empty space) on the plate.

6. Now put your sliced cauliflower florets on this batter. Try to cover the whole length of the plate with florets.

7. Pour rest of the batter on these florets evenly, try and cover all the pieces of cauliflower with batter.

8. Now close the sandwich maker and let it cook for about 10 minutes or so. This time will vary with each equipment. So you have to check in between to see if the waffles are ready or not. When you see them turning golden brown in parts they are done. You can get an idea from the pictures also.

This is the top layer when it was done.

Tthis is the top layer which wasn't done so i flipped it over.

NOTE: 1. while making these waffle, when I tried to open the machine waffle was sticking on both sides so with help of a blunt knife I separated it from the top. May be I had this issue because my machine was old and most probably you won’t face this issue but anyway thought of mentioning it.

2. Second problem I faced was that the bottom part of waffle browned before the top one so I had to flip the whole waffle again for 1-2 minutes so that it got evenly browned. I flipped the waffle and kept the machine open so that I don’t overdo the top. Maybe this issue can also be credited specifically to my machine only.

VARIATIONS:

In place of cauliflowers you can use bread slices or sliced paneer also. In case of paneer make sure to pat dry paneer slices on a kitchen towel because it becomes messy if paneer leaves water.