If these little patties do not attract your attention straight away, you just have to wait to taste them! They’re very tasty, relatively easy to make, don’t cost much if you want a budget weekday meal, healthy, and you can easily pack them in a sandwich for a work/school/Uni lunch. So there you go, have I convinced you to try them? 😀

By the way, this is one of those foods I missed most since moving to Australia. Why? I didn’t know where to buy chickpea flour! And now I do! I think I have managed to find all ingredients of a traditional Persian kitchen now and that is making me really happy 🙂

Recipe:

Ingredients:

(Yields 5 palm-size meat patties)

• 130 g Chickpea flour (also called Gram Flour or Besan, either coarse or fine version will do for this recipe)
• 160 g Lean mince beef
• 1 onion, grated
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspooon Advieh (See Note 1 below) or 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 200g diced tomatoes ( I get the canned ones, you can use Passata instead)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil

Method:
1. Grate the onion, but discard the liquid that comes out of it.
2.Place the minced beef in a large bowl.
3.Add the onion, egg, flour, and seasoning and mix well. The mixture will be quite sticky, and it will not resemble an elastic dough. This is totally fine.

4.Heat olive oil in a large frying pan on medium heat.
5.Fill a small bowl with water. You use this to wet your hands when making the patties. The mixture is quite sticky as I said, and wetting your hands makes it a lot easier to handle the mixture.
6.Place the bowl of water and bowl of patty mixture near your stove.
7.Keep repeating the following steps until all mixture is used:

-Wet your hands.
– Take 3 tablespoons of mixture and form a flat circular patty with a hole in middle.
-Place on the hot oiled frying pan.

8-You know each patty is done when the edges are browned. (For your first time, after 2-3 minutes you can carefully lift the patty off the pan to see how well it’s fried underneath). Once this happens, flip and let the other side fry.
9-Once finished transfer the patties to a separate pan (See Note 2 below).

10-Add the passata or diced tomato with a tiny bit of salt and pepper.

11-Move the patties around slightly so they are covered with the sauce.
12-Simmer them on low heat until the sauce thickens a bit. Do not leave it too long or the patties will stick to the pan and become dry.
13-Transfer them to serving dishes.of you want to use them as sandwich filling and not with rice or salad, store the sauce separately.

Note 1:Advieh in Persian means “spice”. In Persian cuisine, advieh is a mix of cinnamon,nutmeg, ground dried rose petals, cardamom and ground cumin. You can easily make this yourself at home which is what I do. Follow this link for the recipe: http://mypersiankitchen.com/advieh-%E2%80%93-a-blend-of-spices-for-persian-cooking/
Note 2: After frying the patties, they will be slightly dry. But, once you simmer them in the tomato sauce, they will become soft and even more delicious!