Today's lunch was definitely a successful experiment. It is based on the concept of onion bhaji, but shallow-fried in one chunk rather than deep-fried in dollops. And on the concept of frittata. Farinata is a wonderful speciality from Livorno made by cooking in olive oil, in a baker's oven, a batter made of chickpea flour, water and salt. For a couple of days I'd had a craving for onion bhaji, but at the same time I didn't feel like the whole hassle of deep-frying (which I almost never do), so I came up with this.

So, the basic concept of this dish (which is vegan, btw) is this: Make a besan batter, add assorted veg and spices, cook like frittata.

The detail of what I did today.

First I chopped and sauteed two small zucchini and one onion with olive oil, salt, a broken-up dried chilli, a tsp of black mustard seeds and some ground black pepper.

Meanwhile I made a batter by gradually adding water to a reasonable quantity (I know...) of chickpea flour. Gradually is important to get a smooth batter. The final consistency should be similar to frittata/omelette batter (and I think that variations in consistency wouldn't be a problem -- probably more a question of taste than anything else).

To the batter I added the sauteed veg and: salt, more pepper, ground coriander seed, another chopped (but raw) onion, and a bunch of roughly chopped fresh coriander leaves.

At this point I heated some olive oil in the non-stick pan and fried the batter, spreading it thin and turning when one side was done. Thin is important (about 1/2 cm I'd say). Cooked on medium heat, each side took about 3-5 minutes. On the other hand, if it breaks when it's turned, it doesn't matter.

Extremely yummy! It would probably also be decent enough cold, unlike deep-fried bhaji.

(Note: besan is the indian name of chickpea flour or gram flour, and the word I tend to use for it because I like it.)