• Reflections in train windows. I am an obnoxious person to share a carriage with.
• Socca crepe with asparagus shiraae filling & toasted sesame seeds
• Unidentified Growing Object, from my mum's garden

We talked about chickpea flour in my last post - well, I should say, I talked about chickpea flour. You guys were all like, yeah, whatever, chickpea flour, check out your first-world problems. But the point is, Kath and Heather helped me come up with a cunning plan (sorry, that makes it sound like we're in cahoots. We're not in cahoots) (do you want to be in cahoots?) and pointed me towards socca.

Socca... is not something I've ever come across before. That is, I've come across soccer (as in, the American word for football), and I've come across Sokka (as in, the character from Avatar: the Last Airbender), but despite the relative charms of each of these, they've never made me any less hungry. So I was pretty much all for the new type, which is basically a sort of pancakey flatbread made out of chickpea flour, according to the internet. Except, to make a short story long, English pancakes are crepier than American pancakes (but not crappier! - an important distinction), so I decided to try for a savoury crepe.

Lesson learned: chickpea flour doesn't want to be a savoury crepe. It wants to be something the consistency of scrambled egg... albeit still delicious. It took combining it with plain (all-purpose) flour to create something manouverable, which sucks if you're gluten-intolerant (though I'm sure something else would work!). I made asparagus shiraae for the filling, which is a Japanese vegetable side-dish with a tofu dressing; mine is kind of non-traditional, as I saved time by steaming my asparagus in the microwave for a couple of minutes and using tahini from a jar rather than like, grinding my own sesame seeds. The good news is, it tastes amazing.

Socca (Chickpea Flour) Crepe with Asparagus Shiraae
Serves One


Filling (adapted from Everyday Harumi by Harumi Kurihara):
75g tofu, pressed to remove excess water
4 spears of asparagus
1 small tbsp tahini
a dash of light soy sauce
1/8tsp miso, optional
salt, pepper

1. Remove the woody part of the asparagus and cut each spear diagonally into three. Lay in a microwaveable dish in a few millimeters of water and steam for 2 minutes or so.

2. Put the remaining ingredients in a small bowl and mix thoroughly; I used a fork to break it all up. Add the asparagus and mix into the dressing.


for crepe:
1 heaped tbsp chickpea (gram/garbanzo) flour
1 heaped tsbp plain (all-purpose) flour
1 tsp nutritional yeast
salt, pepper
scant 1/2 c. (100-120ml) soy or other milk

1. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl, to avoid lumps. Whisk in the milk until smooth.

2. Heat a frying pan with 1 tsp of oil of your choice; I used coconut but it reached smoking point quite fast, so perhaps olive oil is the best bet. Pour the batter into the pan and tilt to coat it, making an even layer (like making an omelette or crepe). Use a rubber spatula to keep the crepe loose in the pan, and once the underside begins to go golden, flip it over and let the other side start to brown.

3. Add filling to pancake, and fold the sides over it. Remove from pan to plate. If you want, while your pan's still hot, toast a few sesame seeds quickly and sprinkle them over your crepe before eating.

I'm not gonna lie: I have a whole cupboard full of alternative flours I keep finding and buying in fits of purest glee, and then realising I have no idea what to do with them and I'm moving house in three weeks and should ideally use them before that time comes. Spelt flour's a fairly easy one. Buckwheat, anyone? Tell me I'm not the only one...