Chickpea Fritters

2 3/4 cup chickpeas, soaked overnight (8 cups cooked)
1 large yellow onion, peeled
1 large potato, peeled and boiled
1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg, beaten
2 Tbsp finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
Olive oil for frying
1/2 lemon

1. Drain the chickpeas and place in a large saucepan. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil, skimming off any froth with a slotted spoon. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours or until tender. Drain and allow to cool.
2. Put the chickpeas, onion, potato, flour, egg and parsley into a food processor. Blend until smooth, then season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
3. Heat about 1/2 inch of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet. Shape the mixture into fritters (about 15), adding a little more flour if the mixture is too wet. Cook several fritters at a time for 5 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Using spatula, transfer the fritters to paper towels to drain. Set aside in a warm place while you cook the remaining mixture. Serve with a squeeze of lemon.

Source: Modern Greek

Try #1 - June 21, 2011
Delicious! I used previously-cooked frozen chickpeas (about 5 cups), which made it much faster. This also meant that I didn't need to let it refrigerate for 30 minutes before frying. Since I used fewer chickpeas than the recipe called for, I only used 1 cup of flour (and I used whole wheat). Everything else was the same. One very valuable lesson I learned: blenders are not the same as food processors! I mean, I know this, but I tried to blend everything in a blender... and it didn't work so well. I was able to puree some of the chickpeas, but I ended up having to mash it all together by hand. So there were some chunks in the fritters, but it didn't really seem to matter in taste or even texture - they were still pretty smooth. I kind of liked the fried onion pieces that were on the outside of some of the fritters. If I were to make this again (assuming I still don't have a food processor), I would put only the chickpeas in the blender (and thaw them first), and cut the onion and parsley very fine so I could just mash it all together in a bowl. The frying went great - I had my heat at 5:00 (medium high). Nathan LOVED this. It went well with some ketchup, although next time I'd like to plan ahead enough to make some tzatziki to go with it.