Happy World Pulses Day! We’re celebrating this day in collaboration with our friends at Hodmedods with our joint recipe of Leek and Celeriac Pakoras with Vegan Raita. These pakoras are crunchy and delicious, made with the finest British grown pulse flour and seasonal vegetables. Served with a fresh vegan raita made with yogurt, fresh herbs and spices for the perfect contrast.
This is the first year World Pulses Day is being celebrated, and why not? Full of nutrition, protein, low impact on the environment, delicious, versatile AND we’ve been eating them for 1000s of years! We often hear more about pulses grown abroad, like chickpeas and common lentils, so we were so happy to team up with Hodmedods to showcase their British grown pulse products and use them in this pakora recipe.
Hodmedods have been working with British farms since 2012 to bring us an exciting range of top quality foods. They love searching out the less well-known ones like the fava bean, "Black Badger" Carlin Peas and Quinoa from the plains of Essex. We love supporting British business, and Hodmedods not only provides dried cooking ingredients, flours, tins of beans and dhal, but also supplies delicious salted snacks we can’t get enough of!
Pakoras are traditionally made with gram flour (which are ground chickpeas, and you can still use gram flour in this recipe if you like), but we have used their local UK grown yellow pea flour instead. We like to cook seasonally so we’ve chosen celeriac and leek as the vegetables in the pakoras. Any veggies will work, and you can mix them up depending on the season. Other vegetables which we love to use in pakoras are onion, kale, potato, fennel and samphire.
Pakoras have lovely irregular shapes to them, which you get from dropping splodges of batter into the hot oil when cooking. And what’s great, is that these can be made ahead of time for dinner or an event, and warmed up in the oven.
More to come from us on the pulse front; next week is World Daal Week where we’ll bring you another joint recipe from ourselves and Hodmedods using British grown pulses!
Leek and Celeriac Pakoras with Vegan Raita
Ingredients Note:
For accuracy, I measure all ingredients in metric as standard, then convert and test the recipe for American cup measurements etc.
(Heads up Aussie and UK readers- your measurements in cups are sometimes different, so please use metric or check you have the correct cup and spoon type!!)
Ingredients
Leek & Celeriac Pakoras
- 2 cups yellow pea flour (gram flour will also work)
- 1 tablespoon crushed chili flakes (optional)
- 1 medium leek, finely sliced
- ½ a celeriac, grated or finely sliced
- 2 teaspoon garam masala
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ cup fresh coriander, chopped
- 1 cup lukewarm water
- Sunflower oil (for deep frying)
Vegan Raita
- 400 g vegan unsweetened yoghurt
- Half a cucumber, grated then lightly squeezed
- 1 Small bunch of fresh mint, rinsed and chopped
- 1 Small bunch of fresh coriander, rinsed and chopped
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 thumb of ginger, finely grated
- Juice of half a lime
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Garam masala (to sprinkle)
Instructions
Leek & Celeriac Pakoras
- In a large bowl, combine the pea or gram flour, chili flakes (if using), leeks, grated celeriac, garam masala, salt, baking powder and coriander leaves.
- Using a spoon or your hands, slowly add the cup of water, mixing continuously. Give it a vigorous mix for a few seconds. You should have a thick creamy batter with air bubbles in it.
- Heat the oil to a high heat. Test it is hot enough with a small amount of batter first - the batter should float and fry.
- Place small handfuls of batter into oil at a time. Dropping these in should give a nice traditional pakora shape.
- Fry the pakoras for 3-4 minutes until golden brown, turning half way through. Do not crowd the pan with pakoras, or they may turn out greasy.
- Once cooked, place pakoras on a cooling rack with greaseproof paper underneath.
- Serve with vegan raita. Mango chutney will also go really well with this.
Vegan Raita
- Combine all ingredients, except garam masala.
- Before serving, sprinkle with garam masala.
