Corn and chickpea flour fritters
Like a lot of people who enjoy cooking, I own a few cookbooks. Over Christmas and my birthday, I got given several to add to my collection…. plus I did buy a few myself!
I tell myself that I don’t need to feel guilty about my cookbook collection since I do read each one I own. I’m sure I’m not the only one who takes cookbooks to read in bed.
The other weekend it was just Alastair and I at home for brunch. I had seen a recipe for pancakes or fritters using chickpea flour, but couldn’t remember where I had read it. I tried flicking through a few of my newest cookbooks and online through my usual recipe websites but with no success. Gaaah! Don’t you hate it when that happens? In the end I couldn’t track down the recipe and had to wing it. That’s the problem with reading so many books and food magazines – you get ideas and inspiration but then you can’t remember where those ideas came from.
I ended up with corn and chickpea flour fritters. I bought the chickpea flour from an Asian grocery store to make onion bhaji and have used it a few times since. Plain flour would work as a substitute, but the chickpea flour gives a unique nutty depth of flavour.
On a side note, I have discovered that indian style chickpea flour is made from chana dal, which is a cousin of the chickpea, not an actual chickpea. There’s lots of alternative names for this flour: chana dal flour, gram flour, dal flour, or besan flour to name a few. Actual chickpea flour (ie made from actual chickpeas) is popular in Italian cuisine and is called farina di ceci.
Ingredients
- 1 cup frozen corn kernels
- 2 cups chickpea/besan flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 tablespoons chopped chives
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup of milk (add a tad more if you think it’s too thick)
- Pepper
- Oil spray
- Cream cheese
- 6-8 cherry tomatoes, quartered and tossed with a dash of olive oil
- Extra chives to garnish
Instructions
- Put all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
- Mix together the eggs, milk, and chives, season with pepper, then stir in the dry ingredients and mix lightly until combined.
- Allow to stand for 10 minutes.
- Heat a nonstick frying pan on medium heat, and lightly spray with oil.
- Drop 1/4 cup measures of mixture on to the frying pan, allowing room for spreading, and cook over medium heat. Turn when bubbles come to surface, and cook another minute.
- Put a dollop of cream cheese and some cherry tomatoes on top of the fritters, and garnish with some extra snipped chives.
January 15, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
Yum – this is just my kind of meal! It looks lovely for summer with the cherry tomatoes on top. 🙂
May 27, 2013 @ 9:47 am
Just made a batch delicious and quick to make:)
November 12, 2013 @ 11:26 pm
Body of recipe mentions onion but this does not appear in the list of ingredients. Clarification?! 😉
November 19, 2013 @ 8:57 pm
Whoops! Don’t know how the onions snuck in there. Don’t add them. 🙂