Pakora

Pakoras are created with main ingredients, usually but not exclusively vegetables, dipped in a batter made from gram flour (chickpea/garbanzo bean flour) with spices, then deep fried.

Common varieties of pakora use onion, eggplant, potato, spinach, plantain, paneer, cauliflower, tomato, or chili pepper,[5] but other foodstuffs can be made into pakoras such as meat or fish. There is no standard recipe, so the spices used are up to the cook and may be chosen due to local tradition or availability; often these include fresh and dried spices such as chilli, fenugreek and coriander. There are pakora variants that use other flours, such as buckwheat flour.

Pakoras are eaten as a snack or appetiser, often accompanied with tamarind sauce, chutney or raita. They are also offered with masala chai to guests at Indian wedding ceremonies.

Pakora in Jaipur

A gram flour fritter is known in Gujarat as bhajia, in Maharashtra as bhaji, in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and Karnataka as bajji. In Bengali it may be called bora (বড়া) or chop (চপ) depending on how and when it is eaten. Pakoda may be interpreted in these states as deep fried balls of finely chopped onions, green chilis, and spices mixed in gram flour.

The word pakoṛā is derived from Sanskrit पक्ववट pakvavaṭa,[6] a compound of pakva ('cooked') and vaṭa ('a small lump') or its derivative vaṭaka, 'a round cake made of pulse fried in oil or ghee'.[7]

Some divergence of transliteration may be noted in the third consonant in the word. The sound is a hard 'da' in the Telugu language and the 'ra' sound would be an incorrect pronunciation. The sound is the retroflex flap [ɽ], which is written in Hindi with the Devanagari letter ड़, and in Urdu with letter ڑ.

However, in the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, the Hindi letter ड़ is transliterated as <ṛ>, popular or non-standard transliterations of Hindi use <d> for this sound, because etymologically, it derives from ड /ɖ/. The occurrence of this consonant in the word pakora has given rise to two common alternative spellings in English: pakoda, which reflects its etymology, and pakora, which reflects its phonology.

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  Pakoras with curry sauce in Zürich
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  Close-up of pakora containing spinach
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  Banana pakora, made from green raw banana slices dipped in Singhara flour (water chestnut flour)
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  Onion pakora
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  Groundnut pakor
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  Buckwheat pakora, which are made during Hindu fasting seasons and holidays
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  Bread pakora, made by deep-frying bread slices coated with gram flour