A number of weeks ago I mentioned having some particularly over-sized spring onions and when commenting on this a regular contributor – Nina – mentioned having a recipe for Spring Onion and Potato bhaji. I insisted she share it and here it is:
Potato and Spring Onion Bhaji
- 1/2 kg potatoes
- 2 bunches spring onions
- 2 small whole red chillis
- 4 tsp coriander seeds
- 1 tsp red chilli powder
- 1/2 tsp tumeric powder
- salt to taste
- 5 tbsp cooking oil
Peel potatoes and cut in four. Heat oil in pot and fry spring onions. Add spices and fry for further 3 minutes. Add a little water to prevent burning. Add potatoes and cover pot and cook on low until potatoes are tender. Remove lid and reduce liquid if necessary.
I finally got round to making her recipe on the weekend and I absolutely loved it.
A most delicious lunch. So thank you Nina and I hope anyone else who makes it enjoys it as much as I did.
Looks nice, though it’s not what I know as a bhaji. To me a bhaji is a deep-fried batter-y sort of thing.
Thanks Mark, I know what you mean and I would call onions in batter and deep fried, onion bhaji and other veg deep fried in the same batter pakora. I do often see recipes for ‘bhaji’ though that aren’t vegetable balls deep fried. My understanding is that the word can be used to refer to any fried vegetable – not necessarily in batter, but then again I may be very wrong. Nina called it bhaji so I did. Does anyone know what the term ‘bhaji’ translates as or is used for? Personally I suspect it may vary throughout India but I’m often wrong….
I’ve been looking forward to seeing this all week, looks scrumptious! Though, like Mark, I think of bhaji as an Indian fritter, the southern version of pakoras… 😉
It is good. See my comment to Mark above for the explanation of why I called it ‘bhaji’ but hopefully someone more knowledgeable than I, will let us know when to use the term.
Looks lovely. It isn’t what I was expecting a bhaji to be either – but looks much more appealing. I’d like to try this with my perennial Egyptian walking onions that are thriving at the moment.
Looks delicious – I like the idea of cooking the pototoes with the spices rather than boiling them in water and then frying them with flavourings.
When I did an Indian cookery course the teacher taught us that same method for making Bombay potatoes – works really well.
It does indeed work well – I tried it last night and the potatoes were delicious, thanks for the recipe!
Oh yay – really glad you enjoyed it.
Although it really does look delicious I too didn’t think of it as bhajiesque
The recipe was one I found on the internet some time ago (don’t you just love Google?) when I had a surplus of spring onions and I was searching for vegan recipes to make when my daughter was visiting. The recipe is Pakistani, apparently, and it was called a ‘bhaji’ which like others have said, doesn’t really fit with the usual interpretation. It’s more-ish though!
Oh, and my daughter is now a (temporary) carnivore, she tells me. Sigh. I’ve got a stack of vegan recipes going begging, if anyone is stuck!
When I was 15 I became vegetarian in part because I thought it would be cool and in part to annoy my mother. The latter back fired when she simply insisted I cook my own meals. Unfortunately at that point I’d already announced to my friends I was giving up meat so I had no choice but to learn to cook. Sadly google didn’t exist at the time, but I did perfect the cheesecake recipe in ‘Cookery the Australian Way’.
This looks lovely!
Hi all,
I came across this interesting discussion on the word bhaji and thought I should add to it!
They are actually two different words from Marathi language which is similar to Hindi but are spelt the same way in English.
Bhaji are deep fried fritters; any vegetable can be used but they are usually made of onion or potato. In Hindi these are known as pakodas/pakoras.
The other bhaji (actually pronounced “bhaaji”) is a cooked vegetable preparation as the one described in the recipe. It’s a broad rubric that encompasses both stir-fried vegetables and vegetable curries.
When so many languages reside in a space together a lot of chaos happens and words can get interchanged and passover into other languages. 🙂
Sunita
Thanks heaps for your input Sunita – really informative. For some reason almost every Indian restaurant I’ve ever been to calls the fritters bhaji when they are made from onion and pakoras when made from anything else. Its interesting how language conventions develop and then become ‘the’ way to describe something. Language can be fascinating, especially as you say, when so many languages reside together and then are transliterated into another completely different one. Thanks again for clarifying things.
Well, I have to say I learned a lot just by reading all the comments here! I still have a lot of young onions I need to use, so I am going to try this recipe myself. It looks and sounds delicious to me!