I would love to get a recipe for the dipping sauce for pakora.  Not the mint sauce - the pink coloured one.

Recipe: Pakora Dipping Sauce Tamarind
Pakora Dipping Sauce - Tamarind

1/4 pound tamarind pulp
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red chili powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup water

Soak Tamarind in hot water for about one hour. Drain the tamarind and grind it in a mortar and pestle.

If its already ground, then just mash it and mix other ingredients.

Hi,  This is the recipe they use in restaurants.  The ingredients may seem bizaar, but, it works!

250 ml natural yoghurt
salt to taste
1 level teaspoon chilli powder
1 level teaspoon mint sauce
7 tablespoons tomato ketchup

Mix all ingredients together and voila!

This is the ingredient list I was given when I asked in  restaurant (unfortunately they didn't specify quantities, but I tried it with these amounts and the result was exactly the same to my taste).

3 parts tamarind pulp (strained)
1 part sugar
1part tom ketchup
1 part roast garlic (cloves roasted dry in their skins for 15-20 mins, then mashed with a fork)
half a part mint sauce
salt to taste

Combine all the ingredients
If you want it "authentic" red add a touch of coloring.

1x large onion
1x teaspoon of salt
1x tablespoon of hot chilli powder (adjust to suit taste - i like 'em spicy)
1x tablespoon of mint sauce
6x tablespoons of tomato sauce
Red food colouring
dash of lemon juice

Peel and very finely chop/dice the onion, place in a bowl, add the salt, chilli powder, mint sauce, tomato sauce and lemon juice

Mix well (a hand blender is good for chopping the onions up even finer), add food colouring to give it that glow in the dark vivid bright red colour

Dilute mixture with water to suit

Looks like my BIR favourite. Thanks for this one.

An alternative...

3 heaped teaspoons hot chilli powder (adjust to own taste)
1 teaspoon mint sauce
1 teaspoon lemon juice
4 teaspoons tomato ketchup
1 teaspoon tomato puree
2 desertspoons water (to thin mixture, adjust to suit)

Heres my Pakora sauce

2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp mint sauce
4 tsp tomato ketchup
half tsp tomato puree water to 1 part tomato 3 parts water
150 g plain yogurt - ie. 1 small carton
1 or 2 drops of red food colour depending on the colour you want
water to dilute if you want the sauce to be more runny

mix all together and refrigerate until needed ( the same day)

best, Rich 

They all look really nice, but I have never tried this sauce before until last Thursday when I just dropped into a local Indian Restaurant on the way out of work.

I had this with my poppadoms, (I'm sure they serve the same thing with Pakora's too), but the one I had was a lot darker than these, it was more of a claret colour, and at first I could not make out what the taste was, butlooking at these sauces now it all makes sense

I will try some of these sauces as this is new to me and as one who doesn't normally like tamarind, I was really impressed.

Good post guys

Quote from: stephenperry on May 28, 2006, 02:53 PM
1x large onion
1x teaspoon of salt
1x tablespoon of hot chilli powder (adjust to suit taste - i like 'em spicy)
1x tablespoon of mint sauce
6x tablespoons of tomato sauce
Red food colouring
dash of lemon juice

Peel and very finely chop/dice the onion, place in a bowl, add the salt, chilli powder, mint sauce, tomato sauce and lemon juice

Mix well (a hand blender is good for chopping the onions up even finer), add food colouring to give it that glow in the dark vivid bright red colour

Dilute mixture with water to suit

This tastes exactly like the spicy red onions served with poppadums at my local BIR.  Really good.  Can't say i've tasted spicy onions, pakora or pakora dipping sauce when i've been in Scotland though.  Next visit, i'll give em a go.  Am tempted to try so of the highly rated recipes though as many agree they are so close to the real thing  ;D ;D