Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Chickpea-Flour Pancakes!

The chickpea-flour pancake. So... perfect, and I can't believe I haven't yet taken a picture of it for all of you. (If you follow my Twitter, you might notice that I tweet about the chickpea-flour pancake way too much.)

This is how it's done: 1 part chickpea flour (I use about 1/3 cup for one pancake) to 2 parts water. Stir the water in very slowly to avoid lumps. Add spices to taste; chilis or mustardseed or turmeric for a savory pancake, cardamom or cinnamon for a sweet one.

Oil your pan and pour in the pancake. Cover and keep on low heat for about six or seven minutes. The top will look "silky" (Jaffrey's term) but not cooked like a pancake. The underside, meanwhile, will be getting all brown.

You'll know when it's done. That is to say, you'll know when it's started to burn. Stop right before that point.

Take the lid off of the pan and put some filling into the "silky" side before folding the whole thing up with your spatula and sliding it onto your plate. As you can see, I've filled mine with some of the potato mixture left over from the sambar. My favorite thing to stuff inside a chickpea-flour pancake is Jaffrey's cabbage recipe (recipe itself at the link), but you can put just about anything in there, including sliced fruit and honey.

Oh, and that other thing on my plate? Chutney powder. That stuff is so awesome. I tasted it for the first time in Bangalore and was so excited to get some of my own.

Tonight is silverbeet night and there will be pictures...

3 comments:

ctrlalteredmind said...

At home we call this a 'tomato omelette', you just add a good serving of finely-chopped tomatoes to the mix. Especially wonderful if some Amul butter is used instead of oil, yumm!

Blue said...

But does it have egg instead of chickpeas?

ctrlalteredmind said...

Nope, everything else is the same as the way you made it - the tomato omelette is the vegetarian option that replaces egg omelettes on the menu in Udupi restaurants.