Daring Bakers: What A Cracker

Sarah  from All Our Fingers in the Pie was our February 2013 Daring Bakers' host and she challenged us to use our creativity in making our own crisp flatbreads and crackers. I was quite pleased with the challenge simply because I love eating crackers and flatbreads and this was the impetus I needed to actually get down to baking some for myself (sometimes when it comes to munchies like crackers, I find myself buying them rather than making them).

As I looked at the recipes Sarah left on the Daring Bakers site, my eyes lingered on the one for Onion and Poppyseed Crackers. I love everything and anything onion and poppy seeds are such a delighful addition be in cakes, breads or even crackers. I read through the recipe and was intrigued at how Sarah uses real onions, not a flavouring in her crackers and we're not talking about a hint of onion, we're talking about a whole cup of pureed onions (which in my case came from 3 medium onions that were chopped and then blended). 

Whoa, this has to be one helluva onion cracker. I was pleased. I decided to add a couple of ingredients o the recipe: cheese (for I do love my cheese and a cheese cracker is just the most perfect crunchy snack) and chilli flakes (for I am an Asian who needs heat in anything I eat). 

Sarah's recipe (you can get it from her blog, or by clicking here) was a breeze to follow and her method was uncomplicated. The only bump in the road I encountered had nothing to do with the recipe but my execution of it. My first batch of crackers turned out more puffy than crisp simply because I didn't roll the dough out thin enough. As it turned out, the puffy, chewy crackers were delicious also, so that wasn't too much of a  bump!

I made these crackers in the morning and took them with me to the office. They were gone by midday. Everyone loved them .. well, not the onion haters as the flavour of the allium was definitely apparent. The addition of the cheese and chilli worked out well too, the kick of the chilli and the saltiness of the cheese (I used cheddar) added punch to an already delicious cracker. 

Deep Fried Butter

Paula Deen is one of my guilty pleasures.

There! I've said it. I guiltily tune in to her show on TV to watch as she creates Southern-style dish or other that almost always has butter or cream or both. And don't get me started on all that deep frying and all that sugar!

Some classic Paula meals? A brunch burger that comprises a hamburger patty, sliced bacon and a fried egg in between two halves of a GLAZED DOUGHNUT! And there's the deep-fried cheesy lasagna. Oh! Wait... there's more: A cheesecake WITH white chocolate that's wrapped in a pastry that is coated with egg and DEEP FRIED! The fried cake is then dusted with powdered sugar! Holy smokes. I may need to catch my breath after that one.

As flabbergasted as I sometimes am at her artery-clogging, full fat recipes, they do sound really appetising. Well, maybe not the cheesecake ... that just sounds scary. But often, I find myself wanting to reach through my TV screen to just grab a taste of what she's served up. Her lemon linguini with butter, sour cream and cheese, for example, just sounds too good. As does her three-cheese artichoke dip.

There was one recipe in particular that I've wanted to try for a very long time. I actually first saw it on a programme on the food channel about the food that come out of state food fairs in the United States. Of all the deep-fried concoctions, one stood out: deep fried butter. A stick of frozen butter was impaled on a stick, coated with batter and deep fried.

What? My head was spinning at the idea of deep fried butter.

Then I saw it on Paula's show. Her way is slightly different. She mixes softened butter with some cream cheese, freezes the mix and then deep fries it.

I had to make it. I was curious. I just had to try it.

Of course it tastes great. Of course I was tortured with guilt at every bite but it was just so good. (I rationalised that if I only ate two pieces, it's about the same as eating a piece of toast with lots of butter! He he he.)

So here it is. A sometimes snack which I vow to make sparingly. Just so good!

Deep Fried Butter Balls
125 gm butter, softened
50g cream cheese, softened
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tsp chilli flakes
For coating
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup flour
2 cups bread crumbs

Mix the softened butter, cheese and parsley together till well incorporated. Spoon the mixture into balls and freeze for at least 30 mins or until hard.

Coat the frozen butter balls: roll them first in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs. Work swiftly so the butter doesn't get too soft. Repeat.

Freeze the coated balls again for at least 30 mins or until hard.

Heat some oil in a pan (enough to submerge the balls). When the oil is hot (about 180C), drop the balls in and fry till golden, about 15-20 seconds. Remove onto paper towels and serve. Some butter may leak out but if the balls are well coated, this should be minimal.

Enjoy! 

Crispy Churros

The best way to eat churros? No, not with chocolate sauce, nutella or custard (though these are all excellent dipping sauces). The best way to eat churros is when they're hot. Almost piping hot: you know, barely seconds out of the fryer. OK, not seconds, maybe a minute or so. So hot that the crust outside is so, so crunchy and the insides are still warm and almost custardy. So hot that the cinnamon-sugar you dust on the sticks almost seem to caramelise on the crust. Almost.

Yes, a hot churros are great. They're nice when they cool down too; just not great.

Churros are sometimes called Spanish doughnuts. Honestly, I don't see the comparison to doughnuts. Sure, they are both basically fried dough but the texture of the two are miles apart. For one thing, doughnuts don't have the wonderfully crunchy skin that churros have. Also, yeasted doughnuts are a lot more spongy than the churro. Cake doughnuts on the other hand may have the crisp on the outside but they aren't as soft inside. 

What they resemble more closely are our local Chinese delicacy, Yau Char Kway. Not surprising since one of the stories about the origins of the churro points to China. Still, the Yau Char Kway (also a favourite of mine) is savoury while the churro is mostly eaten sweet — the dough itself isn't sweet but it is topped with cinnamon sugar (or vanilla sugar) or filled with custard/mousse/chocolate. 

I've never made Yau Char Kway before but I have read through many recipes and am building up the courage to try it one day soon. It's a lot more complicated to make than the churro. 

To make the churro, you need just a few ingredients: eggs, flour, butter, water, salt and sugar which you combine to make a pate a choux (the same batter you use for cream puffs). You will also need oil for deep frying the churros and some cinnamon sugar to roll it in after.

Churros
116g butter
1 cup water
pinch of salt
1/2 cup  + 1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup flour
3 eggs
vegetable oil


Mix the one cup of sugar with the cinnamon together and set aside on a plate/flat dish.


Put the water, butter, salt and 1 tbsp sugar in a saucepan. Place the saucepan on the stove (medium heat) and cook until the butter melts and the mixture comes to a boil. Add the floor all at once and stir together with a wooden spoon until everything comes together to form a ball, coming away from the sides of the pan.


Remove from the heat and cool for about 5 mins.


Meanwhile, heat some oil in a deep frying pan or skillet. Use enough oil to properly deep fry the sticks: about 2 inches deep.

Back to the dough: add the eggs one at a time and mix until you  get a smooth, silky, thick dough. In the beginning, it may look a little sludgy but keep at it: as you mix in all the eggs and beat the dough, it will become silky smooth. 


Fill a piping bag that has been fitted with a star nozzle (a big one, if you have). The nozzle will ensure your churro has the groves that distinguish them. 


Check if the oil is hot enough. It should be about 180C but if you dont have a thermometer (I don't), you can drop a small bit of dough into the oil; if it bubbles instantly, you are good to go.
(A note on the oil: as you go on, careful not to let the oil get too hot as this will brown the outsides faster than the insides can cook)
:
Pipe the dough directly into the hot oil, in strips of about 5 to six inches (depending on the size of your pan). Pipe two or three strips at a time. Cook each side for about 2 mins. The outside should be really crusty and a deep golden brown and the bubbles around it should have reduced considerably. 


Remove, drain on a paper towel and roll in cinnamon sugar. 


Eat when it is hot!

Florentines

When I was a school girl, my mother used to make me eat a handful of blanched almonds every day.  She’d read somewhere that almonds were brain food and obviously my lacklustre performance in school must have troubled her , hence the almonds.

Frankly, I hated them. Blanched almonds didn’t taste great. Plus, they were unseasoned. Not a grain of salt went on them. It was torture for me and, I am assuming, torture for my mother getting me to eat them. Sometimes, I’d tell her to pack them ... that I would eat them on my way to school and three days later she’d find them in my schoolbag, wrapped up in a piece of tissue, rotting. Well, not rotting but definitely past their prime.

Yes, I was a challenge to bring up.

After months of trying, mum gave up and she devised other ways of getting me to eat my daily dose of brain food. I must have been truly an under performer for her to go to such lengths. My favouritest of her almond concoctions was a steamed almond pudding that was only slightly sweet but nice and milky. Oh! I think she thanked the heavens when I professed my love for the custard and actually begged her to make it more often.

I don’t know if it improve my academic performance much or at all (unlike my brother who loved to learn, I found studying a chore) but it surely made me love almonds.

I never did get the recipe for the almond custard from my mum - this will be one of my many regrets - but I have found many other recipes with almonds that I love.

This recipe for Florentines is based on one from Ottolenghi, a restaurant in London. The original is flavoured with orange zest and coated in chocolate. I resisted the chocolate as I didn’t want to underwhelm the almonds. And, I omitted the zest as I didn’t have oranges in my kitchen. Still, the Florentines turned out good.

There is nothing complicated about making Florentines: ingredients are few and the process is simple. For such little effort, you get a crunchy, nutty treat that can be eaten at any time.

 

Florentines

1 egg white 

13/4 cup blanched sliced almonds

1/3 cup icing sugar

pinch of salt

drop of vanilla

Preheat the oven to 150C.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly oil the paper.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Using a fork or a spoon, lift a portion of the mixture (about a tablespoon's worth) onto the baking sheet and spread it as thin as possible, keeping the almond slices close together.

Repeat, leaving about 1cm gap between each portion. 

Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the cookies are cooked through. You can use a spatula or a palette knife to gently lift one cookie to check if the bottom has cooked. They should be a lovely shade of golden when done. 

Remove, cool and eat.

Almond Oat Cookies

  

Things have been a little out of whack lately. Well, not lately exactly. Let me rephrase that: things have been a little out of whack for the past eight months or so and it's all because of my husband. Well, ok, that's not really true. It's all because of my husband's work schedule — he works nights and I work in the day. He works Sundays through to Thursdays and is off on Fridays and Saturdays. I work Mondays through to Fridays and have the weekends off. This kinda makes eating together an impossibility on most days. It kinda makes cooking meals a huge pain as well. And grocery shopping. The only day we have off together — Saturday — we spend catching up or catching a movie. 

The result is a pantry filled with instant noodles, muesli bars and cereal: easy-fix meals for the man to eat when he wakes up at noon or to snack on when he comes back in the early hours of the morning. I used to have a hot meal waiting for him for supper but, well, I've been remiss of late and haven't had the time or energy to be quite the doting wife. Yeah, I know I could cook ahead and freeze meals but I've been too busy and he finds operating the oven too much work anyway. So, to the dude who invented instant noodles,  big thank you!

This weekend I decided to make a huge batch of Almond Oat Cookies for him to eat for breakfast, tea or whenever. 

Biscuits for breakfast? Am I kidding you?

These babies are nutritious. No, really. They're like cereal, actually. Sure, there's a fair amount of sugar in them but there's sugar in them muesli bars too, right? Plus, they are packed with oats and almonds ... now that can't be all bad, right?

More importantly, they're lovely to have with a cup of coffee or tea or a glass of milk. They're nice and chewy with a little crunch, thanks to the almond bits.

And, most importantly, they're real quick to whip up and they fill you up real fast — three cookies at a go is all I can manage. This is good news because three dozen cookies will go a long way ... at least till next weekend. I hope. 

And if not? Well, there are still about a half-dozen packets of instant noodles!

Almond Oat Cookies

1/2 cup all purpose flour, sifted
1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup shaved/sliced blanched almonds
2 tbsp cream
2 tbsp golden syrup (or honey/light corn syrup)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup melted butter

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Whisk the butter, corn syrup, cream and vanilla till well incorporated.

Mix the dry ingredients together: the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, oats and almonds.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir till it becomes a soft dough.

Drop teaspoonfuls of the batter on a lined baking sheet, about 1 inch apart. Flatten the mounds gently with the back of a spoon.

Bake for 8-10 mins. Let them cool slightly before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.

Store in an airtight container.

Battered cauliflower

Don't you hate it when someone yanks the carpet from under you?

You see, I recently got crazy-addicted to a cauliflower side dish sold at an Indian restaurant near my workplace:  spicy, lightly-battered and deep fried, I used to buy a couple portions of the cauliflower dish two or three times a week for dinner. It was sooo good. Crunchy on the outside, soft inside; spicy outside and deliciously mild inside.

Then last week, I noticed that the dish looked a little different. The batter was thicker and I could see that it was seasoned differently.  I tried it. It was still tasty but it wasn't as good as the original. Too much batter. Not crunchy enough. Couldn't taste the cauliflower.

Sigh.

I consulted the proprietor and he explained that he had hired a new chef and this was his recipe. "Whhhyyyyyy," I cried. No really, I did.

Accck! Carpet. Pulled. From under me.

I was devastated. What was I to do now? Sulk, sulk, sulk.

I had no other choice but to try and make the dish myself. I knew it was a fairly common dish in Indian establishments and so I went online to see if I could find recipes for it. Basically, what I needed was a recipe for the batter.

Yup, there were many, many recipes online. I printed out a couple of recipes and bought 1kg of cauliflower on my way home from work.

First batch: batter was just too eggy.

The first recipe I picked looked great online. It was spicy (cardamom, cinnamon, cumin) and it was enhanced with some chopped parsley and chilli. Sounded promising. But, there were some problems:

* The recipe for the batter also called for six eggs. SIX eggs for a large head of cauliflower (unfortunately the recipe didn't indicate how many grams a 'large' head of cauliflower was).  Six eggs sounded too much and so I reduced it by half and added some light stock to keep the consistency of the batter. Despite cutting down the eggs by half, the batter was still very eggy. No go!

*  The recipe also called for a teaspoon of baking powder into the batter: this made the batter kind of fluffy instead of crispy. No go!

I didn't think I could finish the entire bowl of the eggy-battered veg as is and so I made myself a healthy yoghurt dip to go with it. It was slightly better but still eggy.

I decided that the next batch of batter I made would not have a single egg. I settled on a recipe from Jamie Oliver. His batter was akin to that used in Japanese tempura: light and crispy.

Yes! I decided to go with it, adding a little more spice to suit my palette.

The result: SUCCESS. It didn't taste like the dish I bought from the shop but it was so terribly tasty that I didn't care.

The beer makes the batter light and crunchy (some use sparkling water) and it also gives it a really nice colour -- a vibrant yellow.

The secret ingredient

I followed Jamie's advice and included some other vegetables as well: flat-leaf parsley (isn't the green so lovely) and some carrots too.

I was happy. I still intend to recreate the dish from the restaurant but until then, this would more than suffice.

The good and the not so good: Jamie's beer batter (left) was light and bright; see the contrast with the too-eggy batter? 

Cauliflower, battered and fried.


450 g cauliflower, cut into florets
1 cup flat-leaf parsley, leaves only
11/2 cup all purpose flour and 2 tbsp more for dusting

200 ml ice-cold beer

1 tsp roasted ground cumin

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp salt

5 whole black peppercorns, crushed and pounded

Steam cauliflower florets for about 10 mins or until slightly tender (till you can poke a fork through them).

Make the batter: mix the flour, salt, pepper, spices together. Add the beer, a little at a time and stir till all ingredients are well incorporated. It doesn't matter if the batter is slightly lumpy. The consistency of the batter should be like that of double cream. Add more beer if necessary.

Lightly dab the cauliflower florets with a clean dishcloth and dust them with the 2 tbsp flour. Dust some flour on the parsley too.

Head about 2cm oil in a skillet. When hot, dip the cauliflower in the batter and then slide it into the oil. Keep the bowl with the batter close to the skillet so you don't drip the batter on your counter top.

Fry for about 2 mins or so per side or until the batter turns a lovely, golden yellow. 

Drain on paper towels and repeat. Do the same with the parsley but be mindful that these cook quicker than the cauliflower.

Dust with some sea salt. Jamie squeezes a lemon over them but they taste great even without the lemon. 

Flatbread, sweet, salty and cheesy.

]

Honey, salt. pepper, cheese and fresh herb — all come together on a crispy flatbread. 

Aren't you curious? Well, I was when I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen. It was the honey and salt combination that hooked me. I never thought of mixing the two together but the more I thought about it the more I was sure it would taste fantastic. 

I was right. The flatbread was fabulous. Perfect as a scrumptious snack or a delicious dessert or even dinner if you, like me, prefer to eat really light at night.

Flatbreads are mostly unleavened or made without yeast. It's a humble bread made with flour, salt and water. This flatbread from Deb of Smitten Kitchen  is a little less humble as she uses olive oil (a fantastic flavour contributor) for  the dough. And then there is the topping: cheese, honey, parsley (well, Deb used thyme but I had none) and sea salt. 

The recipe makes four flatbreads, each the size of a sheet of A4 paper (or thereabouts, the pieces are irregularly shaped and so this is an estimation). 

I decided to play around with the flavours: while they all had cheese on them (I love cheese and couldn't bear excluding the cheese from the recipe), I used the honey+salt+parsley combination for only one of the flatbread. For the second one, I topped the cheese with some caraway seeds and black pepper. for the third I paired the honey with some dried chilli and parsley and for the final piece, just cheese, parsley, chopped and toasted almonds and pepper. 

They all tasted good but the stand-out was the honey+salt pairing simply because of the complexity of flavours on the crispy bread.

Flatbread with honey, cheese and parsley (and anything else you please)

13/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup olive oil

1/2 cup water

Topping

1/2 cup grated cheese (I used cheddar)

1/4 cup chopped parsley

5 tbsp honey

sea salt

pepper

The flatbread is made completely by hand. Well, and a wooden spoon, briefly. It takes about 30 minutes to make, from start to finish.

First, pre-heat the oven to 220c and put a baking sheet in the middle rack to heat up.

Next, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl till well incorporated. 

Make a well in the centre and pour in the water and the oil.

Using a wooden spoon, gently mix the liquid in with the flour mixture till a dough forms.

Use your hand and form the dough into a ball.

Transfer onto your work surface and knead the dough about four to five times. The dough will be slightly oily.

Divide the dough into four equal portions.

Roll one portion of the dough on a piece of parchment paper. Roll it very thin. Very, very thin: about 1 mm thin. Some portions will be slightly thinner or thicker: that's ok. 

Remove the baking sheet from the oven (remember to use oven mitts!) and slide the parchment onto the sheet and transfer to the oven. Bake for 5 mins or till the bread is lightly golden.

Remove from over, sprinkle the grated cheese all over and return to the oven for 3-4 mins — the sides should be browned. 

Remove and drizzle the honey all over (as much as you wish), sprinkle the sea salt and parsley. 

Repeat with the other three pieces of dough. You can change the toppings at the end but you may want to add more cheese if you are omitting the honey or else your nuts/caraway/etc may not stick to the bread. 

The flatbread is best eaten warm. If you want to save it for later, remove it from the oven a couple of minutes before it is ready and don't add the toppings yet. Just before it's time to eat them, pop them into a pre-heated oven for 3 mins and then add the toppings.

Let's all get cheesy

How good is The Good Wife, right? I could watch episode after episode after episode (I'm halfway through the second season), ignoring the laundry that's spilling out of the basket (so easy to forsake) and the dog that's whining for attention (not so easy cos he's persistent and just so darn cute). I was kidding... about the dog. He watches the Good Wife with me though I don't think he's that fond of it.

So now you know. I've been up late most nights watching episodes of The Good Wife. And you know as well as I that a good TV marathon requires good snacks.

So, before I settled comfortably in front of the telly, I baked myself a few batches of one of my all-time favourite snacks: cheeses crackers.

Loaded with cheese (sharp, sharp cheddar), these crackers are buttery and so crunchy but not brittle. The They aren't pretty to look at but that's not important. They taste divine.

The ingredients for these crackers are few: cheese, flour (plain + bread flour) and butter. The seasoning, you can play around with. I added some smoked paprika and sea salt. You can add some dried herbs, cracked black pepper and add some parmesan with the cheddar.

Here's the recipe:
Ingredients
2 cups grated cheddar, at room temp
1 cup plain flour
1 cup bread flour
1/2 tsp red chilli flakes
1/2 tsp paprika
150g unsalted butter, at room temp
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Sift the flours and add the chilli flakes, paprika and salt and whisk to mix. Cream the butter and cheese till well combined. Add the flour mixture and mix with your hands to form a dough. Chill for 15 to 30 mins.

Roll the dough out till the dough is about 1/4 of an inch thick.

Cut into squares or rectangles.

Bake for about 20 mins or till the crackers are lightly brown and slightly crisp on the outside. It's ok if they seem a little soft in the centre; they will harden as they cool.

Sprinkle with some paprika and salt and you're ready to snack.

WARNING: These go down real easy so make time for the gym real soon!

Snack, crackle and pop, pop, pop!

I don't get why our cinemas don't serve salty popcorn! They used to ... about ten years ago but all we have now is the sweet caramel flakes. Urrrgh. If that's not discrimination, I don't know what is? Not everyone has a sweet tooth after all.

Anyway, no use complaining as popping popcorn at home is easier than frying an egg ... I  mean seriously. And it's a lot cheaper than buying a carton at the cinemas. Since I watch a lot of movies at home (my DVD collection is insane), I can have my salted popcorn at the (home) movies anytime I wish.

It takes less than fifteen minutes from start to finish and it could take about the same time to polish off  a bucketful of the salty flakes. What you need? A medium sized sauce pan with a lid; 3 tbsp vegetable oil; butter (melted); salt and black pepper and corn kernels (of course: be sure not to get the ones for the microwave!).

Heat the oil in the saucepan and add a couple of kernals and cover the saucpan. When you hear the kernals pop (its loud enough, don't worry), fill the saucepan with about 1/3 cup kernels (there should just be a thin layer of kernals at the base of the pan). Cover and let them pop, pop and pop; shaking the pan from time to time.

When the popping stops, remove from fire immediately. The hot oil in the pan will work on the  kernels that have yet to pop.

Melt butter and add salt. Pour the melter butter over the popcorn, sprinkle some pepper and toss to coat it as evenly as possible.



Now,  as easy as it is, there are a few things to look out for.

* Don't let the oil heat up too much --  you'll end up with partially popped kernels with hard centers.

* Not too low heat either as you will end up with some  entirely unpopped kernels

* Not too many kernels in a pan. Just one layer at the base of a saucepan.

* Pop them with oil, not butter unless burnt is your flavour of choice!



If you are more adventurous and like sweet or unusual seasonings for your popcorn, visit Marty Tyme's blog. For our recent Don't Call Me Chef coloum (a monthly food column I co produce with Marty and The Hungry Catterpiller in The Star) Marty tried three flavours of popcorn which  were interesting to say the least. She even made a trail-mix pop corn! That Marty ...

Snack attack: Part III. Onion rings, Indian style.

Ever heard of the Awesome Blossom a.k.a Blooming Onion a.k.a Onion Blossom? Well, commonly found in American establishments (diners and steakhouses commonly serve them), this onion dish originally used the Vidalia onion, a large sweet onion. The onion is cut to resemble a flower, breaded and deep fried. As you can imagine, it's oily and naturally,  loaded with calories.

A relative of the bloom is the onion ring which is kinder to the arteries. Though fried, onion rings aren't necessarily deep fried. Pan-frying with an inch or two of oil will suffice.  Western recipes for onion rings call for the onions (cut in rings, hence the name) to be coated in white flour or cornmeal. Seasoning is mainly salt or sometimes garlic salt. New York Times columnist Mark Bittman dips his onions in milk and then flour and proceeds to fry them  in olive oil. Some recipes call for the rings to be breaded. Others mix some baking powder in a flour batter for puffy rings.



While these rings are pretty nifty, I prefer the Indian version of the onion ring called the onion Bhajee. The concept is the same but the batter has a lot more kick in it. Instead of plain white flour, the Bhajee employs gram flour (that's chickpea flour by the way) mxed with a little rice flour and chilli powder. I used about a cup of gram flour, 1 tbsp rice flour, 3/4 tbsp chilli powder. Oh, you also need a pinch of asofoetida. Finely chopped green chillies and curry leaves (and sometimes parsley) are also added. The dry mix is mixed with enough water to form a thick batter.

The onion rings are then coated generously with the batter (just chuck them into the bowl with the batter and mix them with your hands, ensuring they're well and truly bathed in the batter).  Heat oil to about 180C and fry the battered rings till they're golden. Drain and enjoy.

Indian snacks use gram flour a lot and not just as a batter. The Bonda, for example, is a fried flour ball that's made primarily of gram flour. Once again, mix the gram flour with some rice flour, chilli powder and asafoetida. Add finely chopped chilli, finely chopped spinach (lightly sauteed, just about 2 tbsp) and curry leaves (finely chopped also) and add just enough water to allow you to make little  dough balls.



Again, heat about an inch of oil in a skillet and when hot, drop the dough balls (uneven shapes are customary!) into the oil and fry till golden.

Both the onion bhajee and the bonda are snacks, usually tea time snacks. Because of the gram flour, they're quite filling. The bonda is best eaten with a coconut chutney (a southern Indian dip/sauce) while the onion bhajee is usually eaten with a mint chutney.

To top is off, have some lovely Indian spice tea (masala tea) and you'll have a nice smile on your face. I guarantee.