Asparagus Pea & New Potato Pakoras

Asparagus Pea & New Potato Pakoras & Vegan Mofo Day 11

Day 11 of Vegan Mofo and today I have harvested some asparagus peas, which have rather a unique and delicate flavour. Their flavour is between asparagus and pea hence the name, but they're also known as the winged bean due to their appearance. My little plants have been chucking these beauties out all summer and I have been eating them raw in salads or sauteed as a side vegetable. Today, however I fancied doing something a little different with them as between me and you I was getting fed up with eating them! Even though they are delicious. You don't need many plants; they just don't stop producing. 

Asparagus Pea Seedling

Asparagus Pea Plant Fully Grown

The winged bean

The asparagus pea needs to be harvested young, when the pods are small. If you let them grow longer than about 2-2½ cm they get tough! The fibres in the pod toughen as they get older and they are not very pleasant to eat like that, trust me! This vegetable is extremely popular in hot and humid countries and is abundant across Asia. The pods should be sliced thinly to help break down the fibres in the pods and of course to look their most attractive.

In this recipe they do lose their delicate flavour due to the spices but they retain that all needed crunch! When I came to make this recipe I went to my cupboards only to find out I had run out of gram flour! Arghhh, what is a girl to do! Thinking on my feet so I could get this recipe up and running for vegan mofo I used ordinary plain flour but also threw in some ground up chick peas for flavour! If you have got gram flour, I'd use about 100g-120g of gram flour and don't use normal flour and the cooked chickpeas in the ingredient list.

Ingredients (makes 16-20 pakoras)

70g Asparagus peas

120g New potatoes

60g Cooked chickpeas

65g Flour

½ Tsp Ground cumin

½ Tsp Ground cor

¼ Tsp Chilli powder

¼ Tsp Turmeric

¼ Tsp Asafoetida

11 Tbsp water 

Salt & Pepper

Method

Cook the potato in boiling water until tender, around 10-15 minutes depending on the size of the potatoes. Drain and leave till cool enough to handle. Dice into small pieces.

Pulse the chick peas in a blender until you have a coarse breadcrumb texture.

Slice the asparagus peas thinly.

Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the spices and salt and pepper. Stir to combine everything together. Add the water a little bit at a time until you have a paste like consistency, you might need more or less water, go with your gut.

Add the chickpea 'breadcrumbs' and stir through. Next add the potatoes and asparagus peas and stir again to incorporate everything and ensure the vegetables are covered in the paste.

Shallow fry a table spoon of mixture for each pakora in light olive oil or oil of your preference for about 5 minutes turning once so that both sides are golden brown. Drain on kitchen roll and serve straight away.

We dunked ours into soup!