Continuing with recipes made with chickpea flour or besan, this super tasty cake is not complicated to make. You fry onions, garlic and ginger and then spices to make an intensely flavoured mix, then add chickpea flour and water to make a thick sauce, the cake is then spooned into an oiled dish and left to cool and set. That’s it! It can be eaten cold as pictured below or rolled in desiccated coconut and toasted in the oven.

Makes 2 good portions

1 onion – sliced

2 cloves of garlic – finely chopped

40 grams fresh ginger – cut into tiny batons

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons panch poran – this is a mix of whole spice seeds in equal amounts – cumin, onion, fenugreek, fennel, and mustard.

seeds from 10 green cardamoms

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1 fresh green chilli – finely chopped

150 grams chickpea flour

625 ml water

salt and freshly ground black pepper

desiccated coconut and fresh coriander to garnish

Heat the oil in a sauce pan, add the onions, garlic and fresh ginger and cook on a medium heat until soft and slightly golden.

Add the all spices and cook for a further five minutes.

Put in the chickpea flour and slowly mix in the water stirring out any lumps.

Put on a medium heat and stir constantly, the mix will thicken and start to resemble a bechamel.
Keep cooking and stirring until the mixture is very thick and coming away from the sides of the pan.

Let the mixture cool a bit in the pan before turning it out into an oiled square dish. Don’t worry if you haven’t a dish the right size, the mix will be quite solid and can shaped into a bigger dish as below. You want the cake to be about 2 centimetres thick.

Once the cake is cool, it can cut into cubes, garnished with chopped fresh coriander and either enjoyed as it is with a fresh tomato relish, or rolled in desiccated coconut and toasted in the oven.