Agati Blossom Fritters | Bok Phool Bhaja

One fine evening, after the return from our day long work, my sister brought a small bag full of some flowers which I happened to see for the first time in my life. As my sister described about those flowers, she said that they are edible and are fried with flour batter. My mother recalled the flowers that used to grow in her native place and they used to prepare variety of dishes with it. Now with the passing time, we hardly get to see these flowers in this generation.

Since my sister had a meeting at one of the remote places in the suburbs of Kolkata, a kind native from that place gifted her those edible blossoms. Since the recipe is very easy and my mother was aware of it, we immediately prepared a dozen of fritters the same night and had a satisfying dinner with hot and crunchy Blossom Fritters. Though, it was a simple batter fried fritter, but it tasted just amazing and we enjoyed it with steamed rice.

I’m talking about the AGATI FLOWERS, which are popularly known as ‘Bok Phool’ in Bengali. It sounded very peculiar to me, but these flowers are very famous in the Bengali Cuisine. We often find wholesome of these flowers with most of the vegetable vendors here in Kolkata, but we usually happen to miss a glance of them due to the hush bush in the markets. Agati blossoms grow  during the autumn season, just after the summer months and you get these flowers in abundance during the winter months. Agati flowers are very tender with large white coloured petals and green sepal/calyx. They can be eaten as vegetables in salads, fried or made into curries. ‘Bok Phool Bhaja’ or ‘Fried Agati Blossom’ is a very simple Bengali traditional recipe and a tasty snacks delicacy popular in Bengal.

Since I was in South India in my childhood days, I’ve missed on knowing few of the traditional recipes from Bengal. Nevertheless, now I’m able to give some time to grasp those unknown facts, few from my mother and the rest from Google. To my curiosity, on the same night I happened to Google around the new name ‘Bok Phool’ to what my mother told its name was. I couldn’t recollect this flower name as ‘Sesbania grandiflora’ from my Botany class though, but Google was much more informative. The whole plant is useful for Ayurvedic medicinal practices; the young leaves, white flowers, green fruits have been used for culinary purposes and are very nutritious too. It is known as ‘Agastya’ in Kannada, I mentioned this because Agastya was one of my student’s name as well. I’m not that sure of whether you get these flowers in Bangalore or not, but you can try your luck in the big markets such as Shivajinagar probably. 

So now let’s get into the cooking process, which is pretty simple as it requires no cutting, chopping, grinding etc. Here’s the recipe-

[Veg]

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Course: Snacks/ Appetizer(Starter)

Cuisine: Indian/ Bengali

Serves: 4

Measuring Items: 1 cup = 150 ml ; Teaspoon

Ingredients:

1. Agati Flowers (Bok Phool) - 12
2. Gram Flour/chickpea flour (Besan) - 1 cup
3. Water- 1 ½ cup
4. Salt to taste
5. Oil for frying

Method:

How to prepare ‘Agati blossom fritters’ with step by step pictures and instructions:

1. Take a large bowl filled with water, dip the Agati flowers into it. Wash the flowers gently (as these flowers are very delicate and the petals may get separated).
2. Discard/ remove the filament (a hard thin slimline stalk/stem inside the flower).
   
3. Heat oil in a frying pan and reduce the flame heat when oil is hot enough.
4. Meanwhile, take a mixing bowl, add gram flour, salt and add water making it a slightly semi-thick batter (not very thick, just the medium).
   
5. Beat the batter well and whisk properly. Take one flower at a time, dip it into the batter and coat it well. Drop it into the hot oil.
      
6. You can slide in at least 4 to 5 flowers into the pan for frying at once. Deep fry the flowers on both the sides until they turn a little brownish.
   
7. Now take out the fried flowers from the oil and keep them on the tissue paper.
8. Continue the same frying process to fry the other flowers. (Remember to keep the flame on medium because these flowers are very light and may get burnt when fried on high flame. Therefore, keeping the flame from low to medium will result in crispy fried fritters)
   

Super quick, easy, golden and crispy fried Agati blossom fritters are ready to be served. It is a delicious recipe to go well with hot steamed rice, puffed rice (Moori), or simply as tea-time snacks. Also it’s a great idea to surprise the guests with these rarely available or known flowers by serving them hot with green chutneys or ketchup for the evening snacks which would just taste fantastic to them and leave them to guess the main ingredient used in it. Also you can have as many fritters as possible because these flowers do not absorb a lot of oil during frying and it is recommendable to have at least 3 to 4 fritters for the health conscious people.

Paromita Pramanick ©2018. All Rights Reserved.