A ton of goodness in one little pea

I have no desire to be vegan. I love eggs, cheese and a roasted chicken is a lovely thing. But you’ve got to admire anyone who manages to eat well and live healthy and not take advantage of those main ingredients that are the foundational building blocks for most all cooking that we know and love. Back in the day, I thought vegan cooking meant bland, boring and repetitive meals. I mean come on…just how many tofu scrambles can one person eat in a week?  (That being said, I must admit I have an egg every single morning for breakfast and will never, ever tire of it!) But over the last few years, I’ve discovered that vegan cooking can be pretty amazing. Vegan cooking more than likely will include some ingredients you’re not familiar with. No worries. Most are rather tame and easy to find and work with.

Picture from Sunset Magazine

I found a recipe in Sunset magazine that featured chickpea flour. I love chickpeas (or garbanzo beans) but really have only had them in a salad or when making hummus. Chickpea flour I’ve never used before.  (Apparently chickpea flour is high in protein and is gluten free.) The recipe is for chickpea cakes made by Chef Sean Baker at Gather Restaurant in Berkeley. He serves his cakes with an arugula salad tossed with a fennel dressing. I clipped the recipe and posted it on the fridge door. I assembled all the ingredients including the flour (Bob’s Red Mill’s is nice) and the nutritional yeast (bulk @ Whole Foods). I made a few substitutions: instead of vegetable broth I used chicken (yea, I know, it’s not vegan anymore but it’s what I had on hand), baby spinach for the fava leaves (I looked at the farmer’s market for fava leaves but they were nowhere to be found; be sure to note the additional flour needed if spinach is used), romaine lettuce and pea shoots for the arugula (it’s a little too bitter for my taste), added goat cheese to the salad because it sounded good, white wine vinegar for the Champagne vinegar (couldn’t justify spending money on yet another condiment in the cupboard), left out the cayenne and saffron in the dressing (too spicy and too expensive).  Oh, and I added some orange supremes to the salad.



Picture of my chickpea cakes



I followed the instructions faithfully (except for all of my changes!) and served up the most delicious cakes ever. Crusty sweet on the outside, creamy on the inside. It made enough for leftovers and I’m so glad about that!  I have no illusions of one day being vegan. But when a great recipe comes along, I’m all in favor of cooking it up no matter which school of thought it hails from!