Chickpea Tikki aka Chickpea Burger

As a bengali, I grew up calling chickpeas "Kabuli Chana" and always thought that this quintessential Sunday treat with fried Luchi must hail from Kabul!! For more than 30-yrs, I have devoured on its various culinary appearances, and only thought of fact-checking when starting to put together this recipe for the blog - and am relieved to learn I was not too mistaken!

Citing Wikipedia here:

The chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is a legume of the family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. Its seeds are high in protein. It is one of the earliest cultivated legumes: 7,500-year-old remains have been found in the Middle East.^[1]

Other common names for the species include garbanzo bean, ceci bean, channa and Bengal gram.

I thought of making the tikkis with two things in mind - firstly, I wanted to have something savory without all the deep frying and secondly, wanted something high in protein and fiber. I must mention at this point how transforming an experience it is when "you know what you eat". It's a lifelong journey and I am taking baby steps towards it. Yes, take it as my words of wisdom :)

Serving size: 2 tikkis

Ingredients:

1. 2 cups dried chickpeas (soaked overnight and boiled) or 2 can chickpeas/garbanzo beans drained and washed
2. 4 grated boiled potatoes. Add 1 - 2 beaten eggs if you like - the purpose being of a binding agent. Corn starch would be another alternative
3. finely chopped green chillies/ paste to taste
4. 1 tbsp finely grated ginger
5. salt to taste
6. 2 tbsp dry roasted and ground cumin and coriander powder - feel free to adjust to taste and liking for the flavor
7. 1 tbsp Chaat masala
8. 2 tbsp lemon/lime juice
9. coarsely chopped cilantro/coriander leaves

Steps:

1. Coarsely mash the chickpeas in a food processor or go crazy with a fork or your best warriors, your hands that is. Do not make into a fine paste as you would for a hummus. You want some texture in you tikkis or patties
2. Transfer the mashed chickpea in to a bowl and mix in the remainder of ingredients. You can always adjust the spices to your taste.
3. Once the mixture has come together, shape into small balls (roughly golf size balls) and lightly flatten with your palm to give shape of tikkis or patties or burgers!!
4. Lightly grease a cookie sheet and place the tikkis. You can make a crowd unlike for cookies :)
5. Bake at 400 C for 15 - 20 mins or until lightly browned. Turn to brown both sides.
6. Serve with your favorite chutney or any condiment.

Variations: You can also add spinach, sweet peas, onions to name a few to this recipe