Donna Hay - Chickpea patties

Ok, so a donna hay magazine miraculously landed on my desk recently (I don't buy it!) and it's full of table fashion, and food styling and recipes for sweet things and thing that we already make (presented fancily of course). Sorry to sound so disparaging, but it really feels to be almost content-free, although I don't read magazines much these days, so perhaps I'm just re-sensitized to the style-over-substance thing. Anyhow The Wine Dept saw a little recipe on the 'cheats and nibbles' page and thought it would be fun to make with the little guy, and after they had made them and we had enjoyed them I thought I might post the recipe here, so you can get the recipe without looking at any trendy white-on-white table layouts. I have, of course, incorporated our small changes.

Chickpea Patties

Put half a 400g tin of chickpeas in the bowl of a blender or food processor (the little bowl on our Braun stick blender was big enough) with:
1 egg
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/3 cup flat leaf parsley
a little bit of chilli
salt and pepper

Process that together, then add the rest of the chickpeas and give a few more pulses so the rest of the chickpeas are chopped up but not quite as mushy as the rest. Shape the mixture into patties (Our 2-year-old reckons small patties are best, I concur!) and fry the patties in a little olive oil. 'Donna' suggests serving the patties with shop-bought tzatziki and flatbread but we just mixed some plain greek yoghurt with salt and lemon juice and it was delicious.



The patties were literally childs-play to make and they were tasty. As they are, they would be a good source of vegetarian protein and would travel well for picnics and/or lunchboxes, if you could manage to have any left over (double the recipe if you have more than two people or if you want lunch the next day!).

I personally would also like to experiment with the addition of either a handful of cooked brown rice or some chicken mince (obviously *not* vegetarian) but they really are just fine as they are!