Chickpea Corn Fritters

I love vada or vadai, or what we Malaysians would call or pronounce as "vadeh", that look like this. (There's background music on the blog, so be careful when you click on it.)

Made from dhal, it can look like a doughtnut with a hole in the middle or it could be fritter like. This savoury snack originated from South India.

Sometime in early December last year, I was craving for something spicy (fragrant curry leaves!) and chickpeas. Oh, and sweet corn. I lovvvvvve sweet corn, except not in apom balik, sorry.

Then I thought about falafel, too.

Oh, and corn fritters!

Gosh, I was pretty indecisive that time, I just wanted to eat everything.

With three different recipes as reference - chana dhal, corn fritters and falafel, I thought I'd combine them all and pray for the best.

It was workable, though I'm sure I could have done better with a complete set of ingredients, but ahhh, experiments are called experiments when one isn't too sure about the end results, no?

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup of canned chickpeas, drained.
3/4 cup of canned sweet corn, drained.
1/2 cup of chopped onion.
2 Tbsp cumin seeds
dessicated coconut
2 bird eye chilli, deseeded and chopped.
curry leaves, chopped.
1/2 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp pepper
salt to taste
oil for frying

Directions:
(I can't remember! But I think it went something like this.)
1. Mash chickpeas with a fork. Mix cumin seeds, dessicated coconut, chilli, coriander powder and pepper into the chickpeas.
2. Stir in onions and corn.
3. Make small and flat discs and arrange on the plate.
4. Heat oil for frying.
5. Fry til golden brown.

Erm, yeah, they're not golden brown, I know. I am pretty hopeless with frying fritters as you can see. But they tasted FANTASTIC (curry leaves and cumin seeds, mmmmm) and YB enjoyed them very much.

I would love to make them again some time soon but right now I'm trying to make cookies for Chinese New Year. So far, I've tried making peanut cookies and they were not too shabby! I'll need to make some more this weekend to give away to the family.

I just made pineapple jam for the pineapple tarts (I am such a newbie!) and let's pray they won't turn our disastrous or I'd be very upset. I promised my sisters I'll try to make them for CNY!

Can you believe it's 2 weeks to the Chinese New Year? Holy crap!