Chickpea Scramble
A turning point in the Daddy-Little Boy Green relationship manifested itself last weekend in a brunch that we attended together at Essence Cuisine. Weekends and Saturday mornings in particular are reserved for Mrs Green, that very special time of the week where no one is going to work or nursery and mornings are slow. But when Little Boy Green found out that I was going out for a meal on my own he quickly volunteered himself as my date. I had to do a triple check before purchasing the tickets to the set meal event and I still had my doubts as to whether he was actually going with me until we had left the house and entered the restaurant. He chose me! He chose me! Over Mummy! I love him!
Essence Cuisine is a plant-based restaurant that focuses mainly on raw food. A lot of the food that was served did not quite suit our growing boy’s palate, but he did his best and tried everything. I was very proud. The set menu featured some of the restaurant’s signature dishes and the one that stood out for Little Boy Green was the chickpea scramble. He was so enthused that I promised that we would have a go at making it at home, “so that Mummy can have some”. Mrs Green is never far from his thoughts.
The recipe below is not a very close approximation of what we had, this is a lot more rustic and features tastes, textures and flavours that we are used to, but is nonetheless a new addition to our stockpile of recipes. It is a plant-based take on scrambled eggs, while not trying to replicate eggy flavours, it is very much like its forerunner as a great carrier for a variety of flavours. We used a trio of fresh herbs, but the addition of mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, kale and a host of other herbs and spices would be very tasty.
Many of the recipes that I came across during my research for this dish used either chickpea flour or cooked chickpeas. I am not a huge fan of chickpea flour, I find it too rich and somewhat overwhelming even if Mrs Green disagrees with me. So I thought to combine the two, especially as our two boys are huge fans of chickpeas and to provide for an additional bit of bite to the dish. We served it over slices of sourdough from our favourite bakery, but the scramble would be delicious rolled up in a tortilla, breakfast burrito sty-lee anyone?
Cooking tip: we used a good amount of fresh herbs, they add a fair amount of moisture to the mix, omitting or reducing their amount will speed up the cooking time.
Ingredients: serves 4
- 1 can chickpeas, drained
- 1/2 cup chickpea flour
- 3/4 cup water
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoons ground turmeric
- 2 cloves garlic
- dill, coriander and parsley, a good hand full, roughly 15g of each
- 2 spring onions
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
Method:
- Finely dice the dill, coriander, parsley, spring onions and garlic and place in a large mixing bowl with the chickpeas, chickpea flour, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and ground turmeric and mix well to combine.
- Add the water and continue to mix until a thick batter has formed. Allow to rest for a good 5-10 min. Meanwhile heat the skillet or frying pan with the olive oil over a medium heat.
- Pour the batter into the skillet letting it spread out like a large pancake, cook for a couple of minutes before breaking it up into bite sized pieces. Gently stir the scramble for another 10 minutes until cooked through and slightly charred scraping up the bottom of the pan as you go along.
- Season to taste
