Tofu Pancakes

No maple syrup here, just plum sauce with my pancakes thank-you-very-much.
This may come as a shock, but I used a Mark Bittman recipe (sheesh, do I use anything else these days?). Tofu Pancakes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian sounded particularly tasty for our Meatless Monday. Since there is just the three of us, I cut the recipe in half and swapped out wheat flour for chickpea flour in keeping with my low carb & gluten free culinary attempts.

Started with 1 brick of tofu (about 12 oz) with 1 1/2 TB tahini.

Added a few TB of soy sauce and water. A problem was that I used extra firm tofu which made the batter extremely thick. I had to add back about 1/2 cup water to make it blendable.

I sprinkled 2 TB chickpea flour over the batter instead of whole wheat or wheat flour. Mixed in 2 thinly sliced green onions. Thoroughly mixed it with a rubber spatula.

The batter was still too thick and it was difficult to spread onto the pan, but I made do with a fair amount of glopping and forming patties with the spatula. Cooked over medium heat on a non stick griddle pan with about 1 TB sesame oil.

Drizzled the pancakes with about 1 tsp of store bought plum sauce and served them with sauteed mushrooms/pumpkin and roasted garlic with a bit of soy sauce and salad with kimchi style vegetables. A thumbs up dinner! Even the 4-year old ate the whole thing…quite shocking. But then again, she frequently requests “tofu cheese.”

Foodista has a Bittman pancake version that looks different than mine (read: better than mine…). They look more like fritters. Hmmm…is that what they’re supposed to look like?

Next time, I might use more chickpea flour and keep the batter more like dough, roll in a gluten-free breading (maybe crushed Chex and toasted almonds) and then flatten with a splatula for a fritter. Ooooooh, fritters…