Bhajias

Bhajias are thinly sliced potatoes coated in a spiced gram flour batter and fried until crisp, and they are an East African street snack, popular in Kenya and Tanzania. They arrived from India and have been made locally long enough to be entirely at home. Gram flour is what makes them work and what makes them naturally gluten free. Milled from chana dal, it fries into a crisp shell in a way wheat flour does not, and it carries an earthy, slightly nutty flavour of its own. Rice or corn flour goes in alongside for extra crispness. They belong to the same Indian inheritance in East Africa as chapati, samosas and pilau masala, brought by Indian merchants and labourers over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and absorbed completely into Kenyan and Tanzanian eating. What has changed locally is what goes with them: kachumbari, the tomato and onion salad, is the standard Kenyan accompaniment rather than the chutneys of India, though tamarind chutney and ketchup are both used. The batter should coat the back of a spoon, and it will thin as the potatoes go through it, so more flour is added as you go.