Chickpea scramble—here’s my version

Chickpea scramble meal with spinach
Rajiv Shah

 

A few weeks ago I saw a demo by Angel, (as part of the Leicester Vegan Challenge) making a tofu scramble. I just wondered if it was possible to make using gram flour (chickpea flour). The simple answer is yes.

I just started with what I know about using gram flour—it’s incredibly versatile, so that’s a great place to start from. The rest was just about figuring out the ‘scramble’ part and flavouring it.

I first made a thick giant plain pudhala—basically a chickpea pancake.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup gram flour

  • 1 cup water

  • Pinch of turmeric powder

  • Cayenne pepper to taste (optional)

Method

Gram flour mix

Mix all the dry ingredients together and then add the water to it and mix well until a smooth paste is formed. Leave it for a few minutes.

Gram flour paste

Heat a large pan with a little coconut oil—if you don’t have coconut oil just use whatever you have.

Pudhla cooking on one side

Add the liquid mixture to the pan—let it cook on a gentle heat until the top starts to dry and the edge begins to brown a little.

Pudhla flipped

You should now be able to run a spatula around the edge of the pudhala. If you can lift up the edge of the pudhala—you can now flip it over and cook the other side for a few minutes. Then turn off the heat and let the pan and pudhala cool down for about 30 minutes. You must let it cool completely!

Making the scramble

Once the pudhala has cooled—start to break it up into small rough pieces. Don’t try to make them all the same size—this is not about perfection :)

Making scramble

Add the broken up pieces of the pudhala back to the pan and now you can flavour it. It’s up to you how you flavour it but here is what I used:

  • Tamari
  • Cracked black pepper

On a gentle heat add a splash of Tamari and a generous amount of black pepper—mix well into the chickpea scramble mixture. This should not take more that a couple of minutes. The black pepper really makes the flavour standout of the chickpea scramble.

Flavouring scramble

I think that the chickpea will take strong flavours really well—so experiment!

I then just quickly fried some diced red peppers and wilted some spinach—added some chickpea scramble to this mixture and cooked for a couple of minutes. You should be able to keep the chickpea scramble in the fridge for about five days, so you could make it in advance. You then just have to prepare the vegetables etc and add the chickpea scramble to this—so you could prepare a meal within 10 minutes.

You could use it in a sandwich, a salad, eat it as a snack—it’s very versatile. Hope you enjoy it :)