Black-Eyed Pea Croquettes with Dijon Glaze

These croquettes are easy to make and are packed full of taste. The recipe is from The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone. If the dipping sauce appears a bit low in the photo, it’s because I was already eating some croquettes as soon as I took them off the frying pan. Man, do they fill you up! I kept forgetting that they are composed of ALL beans. These are full of protein but I still needed some veggies on the side, so I chopped up some organic carrots to munch on. Black-Eyed Pea Croquettes with Dijon Glaze
Makes 12 medium size croquettes, serves 4

2 cups black-eyed peas, soaked overnight in water to cover
2 tbl chopped fresh parsley or cilantro
½ tsp fine sea salt
1 tbl shoyu (shoyu is the Japanese word for soy sauce and it’s how most soy sauce is labeled in the health food world these days)
1 tsp ground cumin
2 cups safflower oil for frying (definitely didn’t need that much)

Dipping sauce
½ cup barley malt syrup or rice syrup
(Alicia recommends using the barley malt syrup, but I couldn’t find any at the store. The Rice syrup was really tasty though! I found it in the health food section of the supermarket beside the almond butter, peanut butter and honey)
1 tbl Dijon mustard

Drain the soaked beans and transfer to a food processor (As it turns out, my food processor wasn’t broken, I just assembled it wrong after I washed it last time-yay!). Add the parsley or cilantro, salt, shoyu, and cumin. Blend until the beans are chopped to fine shreds, but don’t blend them to a pulp. The mixture will be slightly wet but should hold together. Form the bean mixture into something between football and UFO shaped croquettes in the palms of your hands.

Heat 1” of oil in a cast-iron skillet to about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. To test the oil, drop in a tiny amount of croquette mixture. If it bubbles furiously and rises to the top, the oil is ready. Do not let the oil get so hot that it smokes. You may need to make little adjustments to the heat throughout the cooking process to avoid burning the croquettes.

Place 4 croquettes in the oil and fry for about 4 minutes on each side. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the fried croquettes to a plate lined with paper towels.

To make the dipping sauce, stir together the barely malt syrup and mustard in a small saucepan. Warm the sauce until it bubbles.

Serve the croquettes while still hot. Drizzle with the dipping sauce or serve it alongside in a dipping bowl.

What a yummy meal! I baked some Oatmeal cookies from the same recipe book after supper. It called for dried plums and walnuts, but I used dried apricots. I also split the cookie batter into two parts. For one half I used the apricots and the walnuts and for the other half I stirred in coconut and chocolate chips—I won't tell you which batch was better ;)

These are the black-eyed peas that I used in the recipe. I love soaking beans and seeing them grow. It reminds me of those toys you used to put in the water and they'd get huge overnight. Just thought I'd share, haha!