Lardbutty goes domestic – home cooked onion bhajis

Breaking with tradition (eating out and ranking a restaurant) Lardbutty shares a much loved recipe for home cooked bhajis.

Some secrets are just too good to keep to yourself so I’m going to share this one – a recipe for onion bhajis, that I make fairly regularly.

One of K’s favourite foods, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve made them since I first saw this recipe in Asda’s March 2009 magazine.

They’re really easy to make but they can take a while to fry (six or seven at a time in a frying pan) so I make them in large batches and freeze them. Then we’ve got a ready supply of bhajis. And one happy K.

Much used recipe – Asda magazine March 2009

Much as I like onions, they don’t much like me so I like to throw in other veggies too: finely sliced sticks of carrots, potatoes, aubergines, and courgettes all work well. But you can try whatever you like.

Ingredients:
~ 14 tablespoons plain flour
~ 1.5 tsp turmeric
~ 1.5 tsp cumin
~ 1.5 tsp garam masala
~ 1.5 tsp chilli powder
~ 1 tsp ground coriander
~ 1 tsp salt

~ 2 eggs
~ 4 tablespoons home-baking lemon juice (or the juice of a fresh lemon)
~ 6 tablespoons water

~ vegetables as desired eg: 1.5 onions, 3x carrots, 2 x potatoes, ½ an aubergine
~ vegetable oil

Method :
1. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt, herbs, spices and turmeric (which – I learnt from James Martin’s Saturday Kitchen – is a natural antiseptic and classed as a condiment rather than a spice).

2. Beat 2 eggs in another bowl, whisk in 4 tablespoons of home-baking lemon juice (or the juice of a fresh lemon) and 6 tablespoons of water.

3. Stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture to make a thick batter (if it’s too thick and dry, add more water a tablespoon at a time until you get a thick, runny batter mixture) and leave for 5 mins.

4. Slice the onions, carrots, potatoes and other vegetables you may be using into fine sticks, then stir thoroughly into the batter.

5. Heat some vegetable oil in a frying pan/saucepan then place a tablespoon of the veggie batter into the oil, and fry for 2 minutes before turning over for another 2 minutes.

6. Cook a few bhajis at a time (in batches) and drain well on kitchen paper.

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I made this batch of 32 bhajis this evening for K’s home-coming as he’s been away with work the past week or so (ok, there were 1 or 5 ‘accidents’ and now there are 27).

Inspired by Jack Monroe (the ‘£10 a week food shop’ girl called Jack who promotes healthy eating on a *seriously* small budget) I worked out the cost of these ingredients – about £1.44 total – which is 4.5 pence per bhaji. Now two for 10p aint bad, as Meatloaf might once have said.

Let’s not kid ourselves that this recipe qualifies as ‘healthy eating’ although you may find these tips useful to help reduce the calorie count:

1. Cram in as many veggies as you can stretch the batter over (so the ratio of veggies to batter is well on the veggies side)
2. Drain well on kitchen paper after frying

They are, however, a cost effective, tasty addition to any meal.

Enjoy!

Download recipe here

Related links
~ Reader Recipes on A Girl Called Jack website