Good Morning Chickpea Pancakes

I hadn't actually planned on writing a blog post today. BUT, sometimes, fate intervenes. My afternoon plans got cancelled so I suddenly have a couple of hours at my disposal. On top of that, I just happened to have made some scrumptious chickpea pancakes for breakfast. These weren't planned either. I simply saw them pop up first on my instagram feed this morning and decided to make them. As you can deduce, the following recipe isn't my own. You can find the original recipe here.

Luckily for me I had all the important ingredients ready to use. It even took care of the left over spinach I wasn't sure what to do with. I followed Tracy's recipe but made a few small changes. First, I added a quarter cup extra chickpea flour because the batter still seemed very thin. It made the pances a little heavier but nevertheless, they were still quite runny in the pan and I couldn't create small perfect round pancakes as Tracy did. Regardless, they tasted fantastic. Spice wise I added thrice the amount of Oregano, less pepper, more salt (regular, I don't have black), and added garlic and onion powder. I used a handful of spinach but I think more would have been nice. A squeeze of lemon juice may give a nice fresh hint next time. I only had one bell pepper as extra veggies, which is nowhere near the 1-2 cups she suggests. Perhaps I would have gotten a thicker batter if I'd have had enough veggies. Something to try next time! Another option may be to add some aquafaba, which binds like eggs, but I didn't have any left after having used it all up to make vegan mayonnaise yesterday.

I topped off these scrumptious savory pancakes with some cherry tomatoes, spring onions, chia seeds, and the vegan mayo I made yesterday to go with some sweet potato fries. You can find the recipe for my vegan mayo here soon*.

Recently Jeroen found out that his protein levels are a little low. (No drama! Just an observation made at the blood donation center) This is an issue many vegetarians and mainly vegans face at some point. We've been doing really well because we eat so many legumes but lately, as life got busy we watched our nutrition a little less and ate pasta a little more. Nutritional yeast is a great source of protein as well as a bunch of vitamins and minerals. Thus, I was really excited about this recipe since it contains so much nutritionaly yeast and, honestly, I think you could add more without any problems. We'll probably add nutritional yeast to more meals from now on. Other good sources of protein for vegans are Quinoa, nut butters, soy based products, and legumes.

Some of the amounts i give in the recipe below are approximations since I adapted the recipe from Tracy's version. She uses cups which can be a little confusing to convert into grams and milliliters. I have a set of measuring cups so I made the recipe using those but I prefer using the metric measuring system because it is more precise. The main issue with trying to convert cups and spoons is that the amount can vary in grams and milliliters depending on what is being measured. A cup of diced bell pepper for example will not weigh as much as a cup of flour, nor will a teaspoon of oregano weigh the same as a teaspoon of oil, or a teaspoon of ground turmeric for that matter even though they are both spices. Here you can find basic US to metric conversions for liquids and here are US to metric conversions for various ingredients. UK to metric conversions can be found here.

*This mayo version is quite fluid, which works well on these pancakes and for burgers. It will need some tweaking for the true mayo consistency.

Serves: 2-4

Time: 15 min.

Ingredients

- 300g chickpea flour

- 250ml water

- 60g nutritional yeast

- 3 tsps dried oregano (10-15g)

- salt and pepper to taste

- A pinch of hot pepper flakes

- garlic and onion powder to taste

- 1-2 handfuls of spinach (or other leafy greens)