Do Better Consulting re-posted a tweet from MerQueenJude’s instagram… and we love it. Here’s the tweet:
It’s okay to be fat. Fat is simply a size and people come in different sizes. People often ask us what we blog about, and for us it’s simple: we share recipes of the food that we like to eat. This blog is about our creativity and joy in the kitchen. Because we often share recipes full of vegetables and because we use ingredients that are often expensive, people label our food as ‘healthy’ or morally superior. These ideas are a manifestation of diet culture which ties superiority and ‘health‘ to thinness. If you haven’t seen the Poodle Science video we highly recommend watching it.
Now that we’re clear that our food is not ‘better’, ‘the right thing to eat’, or somehow going to make you the perfect tool of capitalism or object of beauty, let us share with you a delicious chickpea crepe recipe!
Note that you can cook all the crepes at once, but when we aren’t planning to eat them all at once we will often only cook a couple of crepes for that night and then cook off more crepes during the week so that we can eat this for multiple meals. If you decide to do that, it will shorten the cooking time on the recipe below by at least 30 minutes.
Serves: 6-8
Time: 2 hrs
For the Chickpea Crepe
3 cups chickpea flour
2 1/2 tsp sea salt
3 1/2 cups water
3/8 cup or 6 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp coriander
2 tsp cumin
For the Carrot Top Pesto
small handful of carrot tops
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup almonds or nut milk pulp from making milk
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
For the Tofu Scramble
carrot top pesto
1 block tofu
1 tbsp corn starch
2 tbsp cooking oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp bouillon
1/4 cup of hot water
For the Roasted Harissa Carrots
4 medium carrots
olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp spicy harissa
1 tbsp agave
1 tbsp lemon juice
For the Roasted Cumin Cauliflower
2 small heads of cauliflower, romanesco, or a combination
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Mix the chickpea flour, salt, water, olive oil, and spices. Whisk until smooth and let sit for 30 minutes.
Cut the cauliflower into florets and the carrots into sticks. Toss the cauliflower with the olive oil and spices. Spread on a baking sheet and put in the preheated oven. Cook these until they are golden brown in places and soft when you stick a fork in them, which takes about 40 minutes. Stir every 15 minutes. Toss the carrots with olive oil and salt, and spread on a separate baking sheet. Roast in the preheated oven about one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Stir together the remaining ingredients for the harissa carrots and set aside. Stir this mixture into the carrots when there are 15 minutes remaining. It will reduce and stick to the carrots.
To prepare the pesto, add the carrot tops, garlic, almonds or pulp, olive oil, vinegar, and salt to a food processor or blender. Blend, stopping to scrape down the sides regularly, until the ingredients combine in a chunky pesto. In a blender you may require some additional water to allow this to easily blend.
In a large frying pan, heat a small amount of oil. Once the oil is hot, add about 1/3 cup of chickpea batter to the hot pan. Tilt the pan to spread out the batter, and cook until golden brown and crispy on one side. Be patient, when the bottom is golden brown and crispy, the edges of the top will start to show color. Flip the crepe over and cook until speckled with golden brown on the second side. Cooking crepes to have a crisp but flexible texture takes some practice. Some tips are make sure your oil is hot before you add the batter. Don’t add too much batter. Allow the first side to cook until an even color is achieved before flipping. Remember, the first pancake rule applies to crepes as well. Your first crepe might come out under cooked and crumbly. Don’t be discouraged, keep cooking, be patient, and future crepes will be better.
We often cook as many crepes as we want to eat when we first make this dish. We then refrigerate the batter and fry fresh crepes for leftovers. When cooking batter that has been refrigerated, make sure to stir thoroughly before frying and, if it is too thick, you can add a little water to thin it out.
If you have two frying pans, you can make the tofu scramble at the same time as the chickpea crepes. Add oil to the frying pan and heat to medium low. Drain the tofu and crumble it into the hot pan. Add the corn starch and stir to coat. Fry, turning every 5 minutes, until parts are starting to brown, about 10 minutes. Add the turmeric, garlic powder, and salt. Cook about 5 more minutes stirring regularly until the tofu is coated. While it is cooking, dissolve the bouillon in hot water. Add the bouillon liquid to the tofu, and cook until there is no longer any liquid, but before the tofu gets dry again. Stir the pesto into the tofu scramble.
To serve, top chickpea crepes with the tofu mixture, roasted cauliflower, and harissa carrots. Enjoy!