When I was a student in Glasgow I tried asian food for the first time; being brought up in a white family in the 1960s and 1970s meant that I was used to bland food. The University was close to a street with Pakistani and Indian restaurants. A favourite among students was "pakoras" - either as a starter, if you could afford to eat out, or for many students as a snack after the bars closed. The pakoras were fritters made of gram flour, onions and potatoes (sometimes with peas thrown in too). Down South I have not found the same offering, onion bhajis taste similar but have no potatoes and the starters described as 'pakoras' were different.

A Sikh friend of mine showed me how to make pakoras and I have occasionally made them from my time in Glasgow onwards. He also taught me how to make chappatis but unfortunately that skill has falled by the wayside.

A couple of years ago my wife and I were trying some recipes from a Mediterranean cookbook. We tried courgette fritters - shredded courgette fried in a batter made from cream, eggs and plain flour. I was disappointed with the result and it occured to me to do courgette pakoras instead.

Serves 4 (if this is a substantial part of your meal) or 6+ as a starter

Ingredients

-Pakoras
Roughly 500 g courgettes (courgettes vary a lot in size but this is roughly 2 medium ones)
One medium onion
Roughly 500 g gram flour (this is for budgeting purposes not to be weighed out due to "mixing cement" method)
1 tsp chilli powder
salt

- Dip Sauce
200 ml natural yogurt
1 dollup tomato ketchup
1 tsp chilli powder

Method

1. Shred the courgettes using the coarsest wheel on a food processor or on a mandolin. Chop the onion.
2. Put the shredded courgettes and onion in a bowl and sprinkle salt over the vegetables

3. Stir the vegetable mixture and leave for a good 20 minutes. The salt should visibly start to draw water out of the vegetables (above).

4. Sprinkle gram flour (roughly 100 g) and mix through the vegetables. Add more if the mixture is still wet. Think of this as mixing cement. Leave for about 5 minutes

5. Meanwhile heat a deep fat fryer to about 175 Celsius.

6. Repeat again until the mixture is a very thick paste.

7. Use a spoon and spatula to pick up the mixture and drop it into the hot oil. The thick paste will drop into the oil in large dollups. Use a slotted spoon to break up any large dollups (ideally pakoras are not thicker than 5 cm). Fry until brown. With my deep fat fryer I need to do about 3 batches with this recipe.

8. Take the yogurt, tomato ketchup and chilli powder and mix in a small bowl.

9. Enjoy with a glass of beer or dry cider.

NOTE: The way pakoras fry depends on the amount of water in the batter. That is why it is made "like cement" rather than measuring out a particular amount of each ingredient. I normally find that enough water is drawn out of the vegetables and that no extra water needs to be added. If there is too much water the pakora dollups split into lots of little bits when they hit the oil. If there is too little water then the pakoras tend to taste stodgy. Add water if the mixture appears to be too dry but do so sparingly.