I’ve never made a fritter before, and especially not one out of chickpeas, so this actually seemed like a fun one to try out! Maybe I could broaden my culinary horizons or some shit.

Okay, so, real talk, there’s only four ingredients here, and no real spices to speak of, so it’s not looking promising. Still, this recipe is not a complete disaster on first glance. Chickpeas do taste great with garlic, and the egg and the flour would definitely act as a binding agent to make a fritter. Let’s see how it goes!

Look at that beautiful array of complex flavors we’ll be putting in there. My mouth is already watering thinking about how bland this is going to be.

I started by dicing up six cloves of garlic (if garlic is all I have to work with, then I’m goin ham on the garlic) and putting it into a food processor with my chickpeas. I pulsed them a few times until the chickpeas were broken down into grainy bits. Be careful you don’t do it too much, because it’ll start to turn into hummus. Except you didn’t add any olive oil or salt or anything else that goes into hummus, so it’ll just be sad, gross hummus.

like this!

This can all be accomplished in a blender, but only if you hate yourself and want this to take like nine hours. Use a food processor, even if you have to borrow one. Think of this as an excuse to talk to that weird neighbor who sits at home on weekdays watching daytime Food Network channel.

Once it looked about right, it went into a bowl with an egg (beaten) and a few tablespoons of flour. I mixed them up until they became something that resembled chunky pancake batter. Scrumptious. Time to fry these suckers.

The batter/dough thing is insanely sticky, so making pretty round fritters was actually kind of hard. After some trial and error I found it was easiest to just heat up a pan with some olive oil in it and drop a glob of batter in. It would cling a little to the bottom of the pan right away, and I could then smush it into a fritter-like shape with a fork. Listen, did I mention I’d never made fritters before?

About three minutes on each side seemed to do it. They shouldn’t stick to the bottom of the pan unless you royally fucked up your batter somehow, so they’ll come out nice and easy with a spatula.

And, well, they actually resemble fritters! Which is more than I expected as a fritter novice.

Unfortunately, that’s where the positives ended. The texture was okay, but these really didn’t taste like much of anything at all. Not even all that garlic I threw in there could save it. So, so bland. I tried dipping it in some tzatziki sauce, but instead of helping, it just made me think about how this tzatziki deserved better. How I deserved better! And so do you!

So I tried again! Same as before, but this time I added spices: salt, black pepper, cumin, and coriander. And man, holy shit, let me tell you, it’s kind of magical what a difference a little spice can make. Round two on the fritters was so fucking delicious. My guy and I destroyed these things. There are few pictures to prove they ever existed at all, because we ate them that fast. The tzatziki made them extra yum, instead of making them depressing, and we even tried them out with a little garlic aioli. A+ all around, friends.

The verdict? This recipe is actually not the worst and will produce edible food that looks like the in-game picture. But, following it exactly is only for people who embrace sadness. Get some spices up in there and treat yo self.