I really like french fries. I like french fries way too much, I want to eat them all the time. I like them with stuff on them, I like them unadorned. I want to order them any time I see them on a menu, I have to hold myself back occasionally and order something an adult might eat. I also wanted to make them at home, and I have tried and failed. I have tried lots of different ways with very little success. Complicated methods that involve triple cooking, parboiling and freezing several times. I have tried frying quickly in super hot oil and more slowly in merely quite hot oil. I have tried the strangely convincing cold oil method that Cook's Illustrated lulled me into believing in, and then dashed all my hopes. I have still never made amazing, crispy fries at home.

Enter chickpea fries, or panisse as they are called in France, which are very easy to make at home and fill the french fries niche perfectly: salty, crispy and highly dippable. Traditionally these would be deep fried in olive oil, but deep frying is such a pain, and stinks up your house. I roasted these in a hot oven with a little slick of oil and they were beautifully crisp with puffy, pillowy soft insides. You can call them panisse if you are serving them at a dinner party and fries if you are serving them to a toddler. Or me.

These are slightly healthier (or a lot healthier, depending on how you assess the healthiness of potatoes and chickpeas) than potato fries, so eating a whole bunch of them doesn't give me the guilt hangover of eating a load of french fries. I mean, they are basically hummus. You can't feel too bad about eating hummus can you? No, you can't.

Chickpea flour might be tricky to find, but I have had good luck in most big grocery stores, or in Indian or Mediteranian groceries.

chickpea fries

Adapted from the New York Times

2 cups chickpea flour
1 cup water
1 tsp each, garlic powder, paprika, salt and pepper
finely chopped parsley

Bring water to a boil in a medium sized saucepan. Slowly add in chickpea flour, stirring vigorously to avoid lumps. Cook over medium heat until very thick, like the texture of wet cement.

Pour batter into a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and chill for at least an hour, or overnight if you wish.

Pre-heat oven to 450°F. Cut the set batter into batons, squares or whatever shape you like. Batons are good for dipping though. Roast in hot oven in a little oil, turning fries after about 10 minutes, or when the bottoms are deep brown, and cook about 10 more minutes. Serve sprinkled with salt, pepper and parsley and dip in spicy aioli.

spicy aioli

1/2 cup mayonnaise (use vegan mayonnaise to make the whole recipe vegan)
3 tbs lime juice
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 clove finely minced garlic
1 tsp each salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients well in a small bowl.

I'm totally fascinated by aquafaba, a new egg white substitute that has been getting popular in the last year or two. Aquafaba is something I have been unknowingly throwing away for years, and before I saw it in action, I couldn't really believe that it was actually going to work. Aquafaba is chickpea brine, the water that I have been tipping out of canned beans and pouring away down the drain! But it has a secret power to become an uncanny egg white replacer. It makes very fluffy, glossy meringues indistinguishable from egg white meringue. Uncooked aquafaba meringue has the faintest beany smell, but sugar and a bit of vanilla takes that away, and cooked, the stuff is an incredibly convincing egg white mimic.

To make it work, it helps to reduce the aqua faba by about 25% to thicken it slightly, so 1 cup becomes 3/4 cup. To reduce, heat over medium heat in a small pan for around 10-15 minutes, checking the volume frequently until you get 3/4 the original volume.Now, every time I eat chickpeas I save the liquid in a jar in the freezer for later. I can be frozen and then reduced after, or reduced and then frozen.

These cookies are soft and chewy, with a molten, caramelly little jam puddle through the centre.

jammy walnut cookies:

Adapted from The New York TImes

1 ¾ cups blanched almonds, toasted
1 ½ cups walnuts, toasted
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup aqua faba, reduced by 25%
½ cup raspberry jam

Grind almonds and walnuts in a food processor until mostly finely ground, a few bigger pieces are ok. Combine nuts with sugar, cinnamon and vanilla in a medium bowl.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix aqua faba with the whisk attachment on medium speed until very frothy, about 3 minutes. Fold into nut mixture. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, overnight if you like.

Heat oven to 325°. Scoop golf ball sized cookies onto a parchment lined baking sheet and cook for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, cool for a couple minutes and then carefully make in an indentation in the centre of each cookie. Drop a teaspoon of jam in each and then bake 10 more minutes, until the bottom edges of the cookies are golden brown and jam is bubbling.