Greek Yellow Split Pea Puree

This was such a yummy meal. I wanted to further explore my relatively new “World Vegetarian” and I had a few Khobez wraps and some soya yoghurt to use up. The chapter on beans and pulses in World Vegetarian is the most interesting, I think, and I could have picked out many dishes to try. In the end I went for this Greek split pea puree, using the option to add capers at the end. I adore capers! With it I sort of combined 2 other dishes from the same book to use up some other things from the fridge – mushrooms with white wine and coriander seeds, plus sauteed spinach with dill and onion. I took the parts I liked from both recipes and combined them together because I didn’t have enough spinach or mushroom to make either dish on their own. Finally, I made some tzatziki from American Vegan Kitchen to pull it all together.

This was a fabulous meal. I’ve only ever used split peas in Indian dishes before so it was really nice to eat someting that looks like dhal but tastes so different. Delicious.

Chickpea flour omelette

Tofu omelettes are definitely my culinary downfall. I’ve made the versions from Vegan Brunch about 5 times and only had success once. I’ve had complete fails with every other version I’ve ever tried, using lots of different pans which work well the rest of the time. Am I the only one with this peculiar affliction?

Anyway, I’m giving up even trying now because I’ve discovered these fabulous Indian omelettes, made only with chickpea flour, water and spices. I got the recipe from Madhur Jaffrey “World Vegetarian” but I know there are different versions and I think they’re called either chilla or pudla, depending on how thick they are – they’re also closely related to Provencale Socca, which I fell in love with years ago on a trip to Nice.

The basics are simply chickpea flour and water and you can add in whatever you want. I based my expectations on my tofu omelette disasters and because I didn’t want to waste too many ingredients when it didn’t work, I just used some spices, spring onion and black sesame seeds. I shouldn’t have been so pessimistic because they worked like an absolute dream. They’re probably a cross between an omelette and a crepe, and I see plenty of experimentation coming. I can’t wait to try different flavours in the batter but also stuffing or rolling all sorts of ingredients in them too.

It seems like my omelette wilderness days are behind me!