Besan Chilla (Chickpea Pancakes)

When searching around for recipes to work through my chickpea flour, I stumbled on this absolute gem. What follows is an incredibly easy savoury pancake recipe full of protein, vitamins and spice. All you have to is chop up a few veggies, collect some spices, and whisk it all up with some chickpea flour and water. After that, you fry them like a pancake and eat them with plan yogurt, chutney, or just some butter. This is traditionally a breakfast food, but I think you can eat it any time of day.

The ingredients:

The batter: 

Frying the besan chilla:

Besan Chilla: Savoury Chickpea Pancakes

Ingredients:

•   1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 medium tomato, finely chopped
• 1/4 fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped
• 3 small green chilis, roughly chopped (optional)
• 1/2 inch ginger, grated or pureed
• 1 cup besan (chickpea flour)
• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/4 tsp turmeric 
• 1/4 tsp red chili powder
• 2/3 cup water
• 1 tsp salt
• oil or ghee for frying

Directions:

1. Chop all the veggies finely and combine with the fresh ginger in a medium bowl
2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour and spices
3. Add the veggies and stir to combine
4. Add the water, in two batches, and stir to combine
5. Add salt to taste
6. The recipe can be pre-made up to this point, refrigerated up to 24 hours, and fried later.
   
   To fry the Besan Chilla:
7. Heat some ghee or oil in a heavy bottomed skillet
8. Add 1/4 cup of besan chilla batter and dip the skillet to spread the batter out a little
9. Fry for 2-3 minutes until the bottom is cooked
10. Flip, and fry on the other side until the pancake is cooked through
11. Repeat until all the pancakes are fried. I
12. If you want to have half the pancakes, and save some for the next day, you can just fry however you want, and refrigerate the rest of the batter for up to one day. That said, I wouldn't recommend keeping the batter in the fridge for more than a day.

See the original recipe here.