AI photoChickpea Waffles with Roasted Tomatoes and Burrata
Crisp chickpea waffles with roasted tomatoes, lemony ricotta and burrata.
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Ingredients
Roasted tomatoes
- 500 g Tomatoes
- 4 clove Garlic crushed
- 1 tsp Dried rosemary
- 0.5 tsp Dried thyme
- 2 tbsp Olive oil for frying
- Salt
- Black pepper freshly ground
Chickpea waffles
- 100 g Potato coarsely grated
- 2 can Chickpeas drained and rinsed
- 1 bunch Parsley finely chopped
- 2 clove Garlic finely grated
- 1 pcs Onion finely chopped
- 0.5 tsp Dried rosemary
- 1 tsp Dried thyme
- 1 pcs Egg
- 50 g Breadcrumbs
- Salt
- Black pepper freshly ground
Ricotta cream
- 250 g Ricotta
- 1 pcs Lemon unwaxed, zest grated and a little juice squeezed
- 1.5 tbsp Olive oil
- Salt
- Black pepper freshly ground
To serve
Steps
Put the tomatoes and garlic into a greased ovenproof dish. Drizzle with 2 tbsp olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary (1 tsp), thyme (0.5 tsp), salt and pepper.
Roast the tomatoes in a fan oven heated to 200°C for 20-25 minutes.
Mix the ricotta with the lemon juice, 1.5 tbsp olive oil and lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper. Add a little more lemon juice if you like.
Put the coarsely grated potato into a bowl of cold water for 2-3 minutes.
Drain through a sieve, squeeze the potato well to remove moisture and dry it with a clean tea towel.
Put the potato, chickpeas, parsley (1 bunch), grated garlic (2 cloves), onion (1), rosemary (0.5 tsp), thyme (1 tsp), egg (1), breadcrumbs (50 g), salt and pepper into a food processor and blitz to a coarse mince-like texture.
Heat the waffle iron and brush with oil.
Cook the chickpea waffles one at a time until golden and crisp.
Place the cooked waffles on a wire rack to keep them crisp while you cook the rest.
Serve the waffles with a few spoonfuls of ricotta, roasted tomatoes, rocket, basil and burrata.
This is a dish built on a trick: you treat tinned chickpeas like minced meat. Blitz them with potato, onion, herbs and egg, and the processor breaks down the starch and protein enough that the mixture binds and holds a shape under heat - exactly the way a burger or a croquette does. Without that step you'd have a bowl of beans that falls apart the second you try to lift it. What decides whether this works is moisture, not flavour: too much water in the mix and the waffle iron steams instead of browning, so you get something pale and soft that sticks to the plates instead of something crisp that lifts away clean.
That's why the potato gets soaked, drained and squeezed half to death before it goes anywhere near the processor. Grated raw potato is mostly water wearing a solid disguise, and that water's only use here would be to sabotage you - it would turn your crisp waffle into a soggy one, and no amount of extra cooking time fixes a structural moisture problem, it just dries the outside while the inside stays wet. Squeeze it like you mean it. A tea towel you don't mind staining is the right tool - paper towels just disintegrate.
The tomatoes roasting alongside aren't decoration. Heat concentrates their juice and turns raw acidity into something rounder and almost sweet, the same reason a tomato sauce simmered an hour tastes different from one simmered five minutes - water leaves, sugars stay. You want them collapsed and glossy, not blistered to ash; judge by how they look, not by the clock the recipe gives as a guide.
Chickpeas here do the job minced meat usually does, and that's worth sitting with for a second. Tinned chickpeas are soft, already cooked, cheap, and full of starch - put them in a food processor with egg and breadcrumbs and you get something structurally close to a veggie burger mix. Use dried chickpeas you've cooked yourself if you like, but drain them just as well; the tin water (aquafaba, if you want the fashionable word) is not wanted here, it's extra moisture you don't need.
The potato's job is binding and a little bulk, not flavour - which is exactly why it has to be squeezed dry first. Some say grated potato is grated potato, no prep needed. No - raw grated potato dumped straight into a mix is holding water like a sponge, and that water becomes steam in the waffle iron, and steam is the enemy of crisp. If you don't have potato, a second egg or a bit more breadcrumb does the binding job, just without the slight waffle-fry crunch potato starch gives you.
Onion and garlic are there to be cooked through by residual processor friction and then by the waffle iron's heat - raw onion in a finished dish is sharp and a bit cruel on the tongue, cooked it turns gentler. If raw garlic smell worries you, a small clove, not a large one, and grate it finely so it disperses rather than sitting in one lump that someone bites into later.
Rosemary and thyme, dried rather than fresh, are used twice - once rubbed into the roasting tomatoes, once into the waffle mix - because dried herbs release their oils slowly under heat; fresh herbs here would scorch and go bitter in a hot waffle iron, so dried is the right choice, not a compromise.
Breadcrumbs and egg are the glue - egg sets with heat, breadcrumbs soak up any last moisture and give the crumb something to grip. If you're out of breadcrumbs, dry, blitzed stale bread does the same work; it's the same economics that made breadcrumbs a kitchen staple in the first place - using up what would otherwise be thrown out.
A waffle iron in a UK kitchen is usually a small electric one bought for weekend pancakes and then forgotten in a cupboard - it works fine here, just don't crowd it, and don't open it early to check, since that's how you tear a half-set waffle in two. If you don't own one, a hot flat pan with a weight on top (another pan, a plate) gets you a flatter version - not the ridges, but the same crisp crust, because that crust is really just contact with hot metal and a thin layer of oil, nothing more mysterious than that.
Ricotta stands in for a sauce without being a sauce - lemon zest and juice cut its blandness, which otherwise can taste like not much at all. No ricotta in the fridge, a thick Greek yoghurt loosened with a little oil does a similar cooling job, though you lose the slight grain ricotta has.
Burrata is the one ingredient here you're not meant to improve, cook, or substitute down - fresh mozzarella at a push, but you're trading away the whole point, which is that it bursts rather than melts. Patience matters more at the waffle iron than anywhere else in this dish - rush a batch and you get grey, not gold, and grey chickpea waffle is not a flavour anyone's chasing.