The mystery of undercooked pakodas

Well, it is 1 a.m in the morning and I’m blogging.

Why, you might ask ?

One of the side effects of battling a chest congestion & asthma is that your sleep becomes very intermittent. I have been so sleepless over the course of last week that I really crashed today. Woke up at 12.30 pm on Sunday, having slept for well over 12 hours !! Naturally I am a bit sleepless now after this marathon sleep fiesta

Now what has this got to do with Pakodas ?

Nothing much, apart from the following facts

(a) My ill health has reduced me from being a master chef to being a King of Leftovers. A sudden and dramatic degradation. Somehow reminds me of the following Malayalam poem :
Randu naalu dinam kondoruthane Thandiletti nadathunnathum bhavaan,
Maalika mukaleriya mannante Tholil maaraappu kettunnathum bhavaan. Non mallus can contact me for the translation :-)
(b) Due to reason a, I do not have any new cooking experiments to write about, hence this story from the vaults
(c) The name of my blog is Random thoughts, so it is natural that much of my writing will be so ;-)

Now pakoda is something that has constantly troubled me. The ingredients are simple enough. Gram flour, salt, and chopped up onions and green chillies.

The problem I have is that my pakodas always end up being a touch undercooked, though they are nice and brown on the outside. I have done some experimentation with oil temperatures, frying them in low flame, high flame, medium flame, everything !! Still they continue to turn out the same :(

Now could it be a problem with my gram flour batter consistency ? Possible, but I doubt it. It must be something to do with the way I fry them and how long they need to be in the oil.

Continues to be a mystery for me. 

Btw Bangalore has the classic pakoda weather now. Cloudy and windy with an occasional spattering of rain.

If only I could get them right ……