Wednesday, August 15, 2007

What to do with chickpea flour?



Besan "quiche" with baby portobello, onion, walnut and chard. Dressed with red pepper aioli and basil pesto.

So I bought some chickpea (besan) flour my beloved local Indian market a few weeks ago without any immediate plan of action. I've been browsing some recipes (crepes, "omlettes," etc.) in the meantime, but when Roommate brought me hope a copy of The Voluptuous Vegan I was excited to find several recipes using this stuff. I tried out a quiche-like recipe though I changed it quite a bit. Mainly, I Italian-ized it and cooked it in a pie plate instead of a tart pan. It took much longer to firm up, and I still wanna tweak the seasonings a bit, but this was really yummy with whole grain toast, and homemade aioli (roasted red peppers, garlic, vegannaise, fresh basil, salt, pepper) and pesto (basil, olive oil, pignoli, vegetable broth, lemon, garlic parsley, pepper, nutmeg, oregano). Interestingly it reminded me less of egg than it did poultry. I might play that up next time and try a thanksgiving version with cranberries and sage. The crust is screaming for some breadcrumbs too. In any case, I'll post my exact modifications sometime when I have it down perfectly. In the meantime... someone should come over and eat the left-overs... There's a lot here!

1 comment:

Joe Hughto said...

Another fun thing you can do with chickpea flour is make eggplant parm. Just mix a little bit of water and the flour until you get a nice thick batter. When I used to fry things from time to time I would always use chick pea flour. Chick peas are my favorite food, so it makes sense it's my favorite flour too. :p