This is a recipe from Nyanyake Fatima, an old Swahili friend and a neighbour in Malindi, the town I grew up in. Nyanyake Fatima (Granny Fatima) was famous for her black eyed beans bhajia.
She would make them in the evenings and sell them from a little shop at the front of her house. Those bhajias were legendary! The entire neighbourhood would look forward to Nyanyake Fatima’s bhajia.
When I grew up and went back to Somalia I saw my relatives making the same bhajia, but Nyanyake Fatima’s recipe remains my favourite. I have made it many times, but somehow it isn’t quite the same as Nyanyake Fatima’s. She did not use an electric blender like I do, but a traditional stone grinder to mush the beans. I wonder now if that is the missing ingredient!
Serve the bhajia with shidni sauce or any other kind of sauce. I also like to roll these bhajias in pita bread with salad and tahini sauce – my own version of a falafel roll!
Ingredients
- 200g black eye beans
- 1 small onion
- 4 sticks of spring onions
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 2 green/red chilli (optional)
- ¾ teaspoon of salt
- A bunch of coriander, chopped
- 1 teaspoon of curry powder (optional)
- Oil for deep frying
Instructions
- Soak the beans overnight in hot water.
- Drain it of all access water and blend all ingredients together. Do it all at once if you have a powerful blender and if not do it in little patches.
- Add a little bit of water if your blender can’t blend dry ingredients and gives you a hard time.
- Heat the oil over medium heat
- Shape the mixture into small balls.
- Deep fry in the hot oil, turning to brown evenly on both sides.
- Drain on self absorbent paper.
INFO
Author : Abderazzaq Noor
Recipe by : Mariam