Our homage to The Great British Bake Off | Ayesha

I had the best day today. One of my long time friends from University came over and after catching up we put on our aprons and made pakoras and meringues (as you do!) 

These are only a few snaps of the day but it was so much fun.

Credit goes to my lovely friend for the pakora recipe. 

Pakoras (onion bhajis)

3 onions

1 large potato

1 green chilli

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

3 tsp turmeric powder (make it go really yellow)

Salt to taste

Handful of fresh coriander

1 tsp of whole cumin

Handful of spinach (we didn't have any to hand but it adds a lovely flavour)

About 2 tbsp each of gram flour and plain flour

Water - about 100ml or less.

Method: 

- Thinly slice the onions and shred the potato using a grater.

- Thinly slice the green chilli.

- Add your spices, coriander and spinach.

- There are no real measurements with the gram flour and plain flour; throw as much as necessary in until the mixture resembles that of a typical cake batter, only just covering the solid ingredients. The amount I stated above was just an estimate of how much we used - it really is trial and error.

- Warm up a pot of oil to deep fry.

- Serve when the pakoras are a deep golden brown on both sides.

For the meringues, we started off by following a recipe from BBC Good Food but the oven temperature requirements were no good - 110 degrees celcius for 1.5hours? We found another on the Nigella Lawson website which said to turn the heat up for 140 degrees for 30-40 minutes which worked much better. The meringue nests were crunchy on the outside but slightly gooey on the inside, so delicious. For the first time ever making meringues, we did a pretty good job (if we say so ourselves!)

Once the meringues cooled, we whipped up some double cream, crushed the nests into bits and added some chopped strawberries. Bit of strawberry sauce, mixed it up together and we had our very own Eton Mess. Delish!!!

I would have taken pictures of the finished products but we were so intent on eating them, and everything finished so quickly, that I didn't get a chance. Oh well! The proof was in the pudding!