Socca is Delicious

I was lurking on Pinterest a few weeks ago (surprise, surprise), and saw a picture of chickpea pancakes. Chickpeas? Pancakes? Together? Whaaaaaa? I had never heard of such a thing, but I immediately started daydreaming about them. "Yeah," I told the cats, "we're making chickpea pancakes."

The recipe from Pinterest sounded... okay. But by then it was too late. I needed chickpea pancakes. NEEDED them. The wheat-allergic boyfriend was also pretty excited about the idea. So I went to google. 

This post by David Lebovitz talks about socca, a savory pancake that is a popular street food in Nice. FRENCH chickpea pancakes?! Holy shit. His recipe sounded so simple and delicious, but I knew I wanted a lot of flavor and some veggies in my pancakes, so I looked around a bit more and ended up combining parts of David's recipe with a few others I found online. I also added ground flax seeds and nutritional yeast because I'm obsessed with both at the moment.

Oh, and if you're wondering where to find chickpea flour, Whole Foods sells the Bob's Red Mill version, and most Indian and Arabic grocery stores sell it under the name besan.

So, I made some. I was curious to taste the difference between pan-fried and baked socca, so I split the prepared batter up and tried it both ways. Pan-fried was the definite winner. I blame the less-than-stellar baked batch on the crappy dollar store pizza pan I used. One day I'll have a giant cast iron pan. One day. *sigh*

Socca (Chickpea Pancakes)

Vegan, Gluten-Free, Soy-Free, Egg-Free, Dairy-Free

Makes 6-8 8" pancakes if pan fried, 2-3 large pancakes if baked

1 1/2 cups chickpea flour

1 cup water

1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

2 tablespoons nooch (nutritional yeast)

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 - 1 teaspoon ground cumin (start with less unless you really like cumin)

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for your pan

2 chopped green onions (both white and green sections)

1/2 cup frozen peas (optional, but yummy)

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Cover the bowl and let the batter sit for an  hour or two. Or use it immediately. INSTANT GRATIFICATION.

To Pan Fry: 

Stir batter. Drizzle a nonstick pan (I used an 8" pan) with a little olive oil (1/2 teaspoon-ish) and heat on medium until hot. 

Pour in 1/4 cup batter and use the measuring cup to spread to fill the bottom of the pan. Cook until the entire pancake is firm and starting to brown on the bottom, then flip and cook a few more minutes, until the other side starts to brown. 

Transfer onto a plate or wrap pancakes in foil to keep them warm. Sprinkle with sea salt and pepper before serving.

To Bake:

Preheat oven to 400. Drizzle a pizza pan, baking sheet, or cast iron pan with 2-3 teaspoons olive oil (which is more than I used, and my socca stuck to my shitty pizza pan SO BAD). Stick the pan in the oven to preheat.

Once the oven is done warming up, take the HOT pan out of the oven and pour a semi-thin layer of batter onto the entire pan, smoothing with a spoon if you need to. It's okay if your batter looks pretty thin. Thin socca is delicious and browns faster.

Bake your socca until the edges start to brown, which is anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes, depending on your oven, pan, etc. Let the edges brown. Please. It's so good that way.

When it's done, remove your giant pancake from the oven, cut into pieces, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. We only sprinkled ours with salt because we're ghetto and didn't have pepper. 

Ghetto socca. Still delicious.

So, are you going to make socca, or what? You should. For breakfast, or lunch, or a snack. They kind of taste like a much milder falafel. They're yummy and filling and high in protein and fiber. Yeah, you should make these. Your colon will thank you (unless you're like me, but that's a whole 'nother blog post). 

GO MAKE SOCCA.

Some Hippie Shit

I've been back from the Vida Vegan Blogger Conference for a couple days (which was too overwhelming and amazing and magical to even start to blog about), and I'm working on getting back to eating healthy foods and reasonable portions of them. We're flying to Seattle tonight and I wanted a little something to take on the plane with me so I'm not starving and tempted to eat something naughty as soon as we land. Granola bars sounded like a good idea, mostly because I'm secretly a damn hippie, but also because they’re portable and a whole lot better for me than most airport and post-airport-omg-I’m-starving options. Or so I thought.

The hunt for a recipe began. I googled "healthy granola bar recipe" and the results were crap. Apparently it's cool for people to label something as being healthy even though it contains 225 calories and 15+ grams of sugar per serving. Brown rice syrup AND maple syrup AND a shitload of oil AND tons of chocolate chips? Yeah, no thanks. How is this any different from a candy bar?

I went to twitter and asked my genius friends for advice. I wanted lower-calorie, low-sugar, nutrition-packed bars. What should I use to sweeten them? What should I use as a binder? Nicole at Epicurvegan suggested dates for both. Perfect! I decided to use ground flax seed as well, since I only had four dates on hand and had no plans to change out of my pajamas and go to the store. I gathered whatever other random ingredients sounded good and this is what I came up with:

Healthy-ish Granola Bars

4 dates

1/4 c raisins

2 1/2 c just boiled water

1/2 c ground flax seed

2 tbsp vegan margarine (I used Earth Balance), melted

2 c rolled oats

1/2 c raw cashews

1/2 c slivered almonds

1/4 c pepitas

1/2 c shredded unsweetened coconut

1/2 c unsweetened applesauce

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp instant coffee granules (This is the amount I used, but I would suggest adding more.)

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Put the water in a sauce pan over high heat. Combine the dates (make sure there are no pits!) and raisins in a small bowl and set aside. Measure the flax seeds out into a separate medium-sized bowl and set aside.

3. Layer foil in a 9x13 baking dish and spray the inside with olive oil spray, but only if you want to. I suppose this would work just as well without the oil since the final result wasn’t sticky at all.

4. Combine the oats, nuts, seeds and coconut in a large bowl and transfer the mix to the baking dish.

5. Toast in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove. Stir. Toast for another 10 minutes.

6. When your water starts to boil, remove it from the heat and pour over the date and raisin combination, just enough to cover the fruit. Place a lid over the bowl. Let this soak while you perform the next two steps.

7. Pour 2/3 cup of the hot water over the flax seeds, stir to combine and set aside.

8. Melt the margarine in a small bowl in the microwave, heating it for 15 seconds at a time until almost melted. Stir it to melt the rest of the way. Add to your food processor along with the vanilla extract, salt and coffee granules.

9. Drain the water from the date/raisin mixture and add the fruit to the food processor. Add applesauce and pulse until no large chunks of dates remain.

10. Add flax mixture to the food processor and mix until everything is combined.

11. Your dry mix should be toasted by now. Carefully transfer the toasted mix into the large mixing bowl.

12. Pour the liquid mixture into the mixing bowl and stir until all ingredients combined.

13. Pour the entire mixture into your lined baking dish. Smash it down with a spatula. Spray the spatula with a little bit of olive oil if the mixture is too sticky.

14. Bake at 325 degrees for 35 minutes.

15. Let the granola cool for five minutes before cutting it into 16 bars. Once cut, let them cool for 45-60 minutes before you try to remove them from the pan. Store them, covered, in the fridge to keep them yummy and chewy and firm.

Nutrition (per bar): 165 calories, 94 calories from fat, 10.4g total fat, 3.0 saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 93mg sodium, 15.2g carbohydrates, 3.5g fiber, 3.7g sugar, 4.4g protein.

These came out pretty tasty. They’re very un-sweet, which I like. They’re not bad on the calories and sugar, and the fiber and protein are decent. They’re a little high in fat, but most of that comes from the nuts and I consider that good fat.

I think I’ll use more dates and less flax the next time I make these. Also, MORE COFFEE. I’ll probably double that, if not more. I’ll update the recipe to reflect my changes once I get them figured out. Let me know if you try these. If you like things a little sweeter, you could always add 1/4 c of chocolate chips to the mixture (chopped in a food processor if you want smaller pieces), or just melt some chocolate and drizzle it over the top as the bars cooling and refrigerate until it's firm. I hope you like these as much as I do!

Burritooooooo!

(Please read the title in Beavis's voice. Kthx.)

I know I haven't blogged in a while, but this is worth it. The lovely Janessa at Epicurious Vegan is having a contest. A burrito contest! This is probably my last chance at scoring a ticket to Vida Vegan Con since I'm lame and didn't grab a ticket before it sold out. Cross your fingers for me!

So, here she is. The Vegan Dessert Burrito.


Yes, really. Warm cinnamon and chili apples wrapped in a cinnamon sugar glazed tortilla, topped with vanilla So Delicious ice cream, drizzled with homemade dulce de leche (HOLY SHIT.) and sprinkled with coconut.

For the dulce de leche, I halved a recipe I found at Innocent Primate, and used So Delicious vanilla coconut milk in place of the hemp milk. I was naughty and didn't stir my sauce as frequently as recommended because I was peeling apples and stuff. It was fine.


Once your sauce is simmering nicely, prepare the apple filling. You will need:

• 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and cut into bite-sized pieces
  
• 1 c water
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/8 to 1/4 tsp chili powder
• 3 star anise... pieces? cloves? What are these called?
• 1/4 c brown sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Simmer the apple chunks, cinnamon, chili powder and anise in the water on medium heat until apples are fork-tender. Use a slotted spoon to scoop the apples out of the liquid and set aside.


Measure out 1/4 c of the remaining liquid and discard the rest. Mix the 1/4 c liquid, brown sugar, salt and lemon juice and cook over low heat. Stir frequently. Bring it to a simmer, then add apples and remove from heat.

Your apple mixture should be done around the same time as your dulce de leche. When these are ready, it's time to fry up a tortilla. I used some sort of super healthy high-fiber whole wheat tortilla because I'm watching what I eat. Ha.

For the cinnamon sugar tortilla, melt 1/2 tsp Earth Balance in a skillet over medium heat. when it's nice and bubbly, add your tortilla. Cook 1-2 minutes, then flip it. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the glistening tortilla, then remove from heat, flip, and sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the other side.

Time to assemble your burrito! Place a few scoops of ice cream down the middle of your tortilla. So Delicious vanilla coconut milk ice cream was perfect for this. Spoon warm apples and their sauce over the ice cream. Roll that baby up and put it on your plate. Drizzle more of the apple syrup over the burrito, like green chili, only awesomer. Plop a scoop of ice cream on top, then drizzle the whole thing with the caramely dulce de leche. I recommend using a lot because it's freaking yummy. Sprinkle with shredded coconut. Now, EAT IT.


I would definitely make one of these again, but I would probably toast the coconut, and I'd want two or three people to share the burrito with me. I only got through about a third of it. Don't think I couldn't easily finish the whole thing myself, of course. I'm just working on practicing that one thing. You know. It's called, um, self-something. Self... control? Yeah! That's the stuff!