Pumpkin flower tawa fry/ Shallow fried pumpkin flower fritters

If you love nature, it never disappoints you! Hope you all agree with it. Nature gives us so much which we cannot return or repay in anyway. What we all can do is, grow little green around us in-order to save this beautiful earth for tomorrow. We can use natural resources thoughtfully to save them for our own future. Even during this toughest time of pandemic, one thing that supplies positivity is green/ plants. This way we can give back to nature in the form of oxygen that we consume to survive.

Why am I writing about nature so much today! Reason behind this is major ingredient of today’s recipe, pumpkin flower. As I said earlier edible flowers are magical in terms of their benefits. They aren’t just fancy to see on your plate but with they have numerous health benefits too.  Pumpkin flowers aren’t any less. Normally if you have couple of pumpkin vine in your garden, you will see only male flowers which don’t result in fruit for initial month. Then it is ideal use them in your cooking. They are rich source of Vitamins A, B9, C and minerals like iron, phosphorous. They are good for eye health, and they help in improving immunity. So don’t wait any more to use them in cooking if you have access to them. Culinary usage can be in the form of simple delicious chutney or in salads or like the one which I am sharing in today’s post.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients:

Pumpkin flowers (male flowers*) – 8-10 (as available)

Gram flour – ½ cup

Small semolina/ Chiroti rava – 2 tbsp

Rice flour/ corn flour – 2 tbsp (optional)

Salt – ½ tsp

Chilli powder – ½ tsp

Turmeric powder – a pinch

Sambhar powder / garam masala – ¼ tsp (optional, just for flavour)

Oil – 2-3 tbsp (for frying)

 

Method:

• Collect fresh pumpkin flowers, remove stamen and stalk, discard them. Check for any bugs in the flower and if found remove them. Normally, ants love the flowers.
• Wash the flowers carefully and pat dry to remove any extra water content.
• Now take gram flour, semolina, salt, chilli powder, turmeric powder and sambhar powder (if using) in a wide mixing bowl. Add little water at a time to make bajji like batter. It should not be runny, you will require nearly ¼ cup of water.
• Heat a tawa/ griddle.
• Sprinkle little oil.
• Dip one flower at a time in prepared batter so that it is covered well and place on hot tawa. Do the same with rest of the flower and spread on the tawa.  You can make around 5 flowers once depending on the size of the pan.
• Cook one side for a minute on medium flame. Drizzle little oil on top and flip each flower to cook other side too. Take them out of tawa when both sides turn golden brown, which will be crispy by this time.
• Finish off all the flowers this way and serve the fries hot with rice as a tasty side dish or as snack with your choice of sauce.

Notes:

• *I mentioned male flowers to be used as they don’t give fruits and hence you can pluck them. Female flowers are also edible but plucking them results in loss of fruits.
• Serving these fritters hot is important as they taste best and crispy when hot.
• One can deep fry these too.
• Many variations possible with this recipe. You can use only gram flour to coat the flowers, you can add your favorite flavors. Also many do it by coating the flowers with dry flour, not adding any water to the batter. I shared here my version of recipe.