An aperitif or a healthy snack? Crunchy baked chickpeas are an excellent idea
Baked chickpeas: take a large jar of already cooked chickpeas (230-250 g), rinse them, dry them well and put them in a bowl. Add oil, salt, pepper, paprika and any other spice you like, as well as a tablespoon of flour.
Bake at 180-200 degrees in a fan oven until they are crunchy.
This is an excellent healthy snack for the afternoon or as an accompaniment to an aperitif!
And what about the famous chickpea hummus? There are plenty of recipes online, but basically you just blend the chickpeas with oil and hot water to obtain a soft cream, then add garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, curry, in short, all the spices you prefer. Hummus is great on bread, with vegetables (raw carrots are its perfect match) or even on its own as a side dish
Chickpea burgers and meatballs are a very appetising alternative to meat
To make chickpea burgers and meatballs, all you need is cooked chickpeas, which simply need to be put through the blender or otherwise mashed, adding spices to taste, a little grated cheese, breadcrumbs and an egg to bind the mixture. That way the base is ready; after that you can add vegetables, cheeses, olives, coat the burgers or meatballs in breadcrumbs and cook them in the oven or in a pan. In short, you can let your imagination run wild!
Chickpeas in soups and pasta are excellent for balancing protein intake
Chickpeas in pulse soups are a great classic, but they can also be prepared with pasta when you don’t know which source of protein to add to your lunch.
A simple, quick recipe is pasta with chickpea and cream sauce:
While the pasta is cooking, take a small tin of already cooked chickpeas and put it in the blender, then heat this purée in a pan and add some cooking water to obtain a creamy sauce. When the pasta is nearly ready, add the cooking cream too and let it blend in. When the pasta is ready, toss it into the pan with this little sauce, add grated cheese and pepper and lunch is served!
There are sweet and savoury cakes made with chickpeas that make it possible, for example, to avoid using flour
Chickpeas are an excellent ingredient for making cakes and desserts in the kitchen. They can be used instead of flour, for example, to prepare a delicious chickpea cake. You can use either chickpea flour or already cooked chickpeas, which, being very soft and dense, lend themselves to chocolate cakes similar to brownies.
If, for example, you fancy something savoury and rich in oil, farinata made with chickpea flour is an excellent choice; all you really need to make it is chickpea flour, water, salt and oil.
With the water from chickpeas, known as aquafaba, you can obtain a mixture similar to egg white
Do you want a vegan alternative to egg white? Aquafaba is for you. It is nothing more than the water we find in jars of chickpeas; try it to believe it: if you whisk it as you would egg whites, for a longer time, you will create a mixture just like stiffly whipped egg whites. You can then make countless recipes with it, such as chocolate mousse.
