I know the writers of this cookbook Brave New Meal like to do things a little differently, as we saw with the breakfast spaghetti a couple posts back (link here). Today’s recipe is a vegan take on a frittata.

So obviously classic frittata is made with eggs but there are no eggs in this recipe. The star here is chickpea flour which is an ingredient I have never used before. It is just dried chickpeas that are pulsed into a flour consistency but I wasn’t sure how that would translate into a baked dish like this so I was a little skeptical.

The chickpea flour gets mixed with water, salt and garlic powder to make a batter. At this point I knew something was off because my batter was way too thin. I think the ratio of chickpea flour to water was wrong, it was way too much water. But I continued along hoping that some magic would happen.

The other components to the recipe is just some shallot, artichoke hearts, dill and black pepper. I did make a few substitutions, as you can see in the picture – I used zucchini and thyme in place of the artichoke and dill. I figured those changes would be fine because if you’re making a frittata you can change whatever vegetables you want and it should still work out.

And just a quick little note, I used thyme here because I had it leftover from making the blueberry thyme rolls (link here). I also didn’t want to buy an entire bunch of dill just to use one tablespoon of it for this recipe.

So I kept going with the recipe and put it in the oven to bake and it was not baking. It was supposed to be in the oven for 10 to 12 minutes but mine ended up being in there for probably half an hour. I started it at 500°, which is what the recipe says, but then lowered it to 350° to prevent it from burning once it was in there for longer. I took it out of the oven once it was finally set in the middle and then let it cool. It looked fine and I was waiting to cut into it.

Serving this frittata was where the problems came to light. The texture of this was not good. The outer part was very firm but the inner part was very custardy. Obviously it was supposed to be one texture throughout but I was not a fan of either portions here. I have no idea why it baked so unevenly and I honestly don’t even know what the texture is supposed to be like. One thought that I had though is that the pan I used was too small. The recipe just said to use a large skillet or pan so I used a 9-in pan which I guess was not big enough because I don’t think the frittata was supposed to be this thick. So if I had used a bigger pan and the batter was the proper consistency maybe it would have baked in the correct amount of time.

Not even just texturally though, there were also some problems with the flavour. The batter was just very bland, definitely could have used more seasoning.

I really just don’t know what happened here. This was not one of my top recipes though, that’s for sure. But I do have a whole bag of chickpea flour now, so if you have any recipes suggestions for that please let me know!