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Nan-e Nokhodchi

It is made entirely from chickpea flour, with no wheat in it at all.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (clarified butter).

Ingredients

Method

  1. IT IS MADE ENTIRELY FROM CHICKPEA FLOUR, WITH NO WHEAT IN IT AT ALL. Its article says the cookies are made from chickpea flour, flavoured with cardamom and garnished with pistachio, and the absence of wheat is the whole character of them. Chickpea flour has no gluten, so there is nothing to make the dough elastic and nothing to hold air: the result is dense, crumbly and so short that it collapses to powder in the mouth. It also means the dough cannot be kneaded, rolled thin or handled much at all. Any wheat flour added would make them noticeably tougher and they would stop being this biscuit.
  2. THE FLOUR SHOULD BE ROASTED, AND IT MATTERS. Chickpea flour raw tastes bitter and faintly of beans. If yours is not already roasted, spread it on a tray and give it ten minutes at 150C, stirring once, until it smells nutty. Then cool it completely.
  3. IT IS A DOUGH MADE BY RUBBING, NOT MIXING. Clarified butter rubbed into the flour and icing sugar with the fingertips until it holds together when squeezed. There is no liquid in it at all -- the butter is the only wet ingredient.
  4. IT IS CHILLED BEFORE IT IS CUT. An hour in the fridge, pressed flat between two sheets of parchment to about a centimetre. Warm, it will not hold an edge.
  5. THEY ARE CUT, NOT ROLLED INTO BALLS. Its article is good on the shapes: some hold that the clover is the usual one, others that it is modelled on a hazelnut with etched designs, and squares, hearts and diamonds are all made now. A small cutter pressed straight down and lifted.
  6. A PISTACHIO SLIVER IS PRESSED INTO EACH ONE. The garnish its article names, and it also stops them looking like plain pale discs.
  7. THEY BAKE COOL AND SHORT AND MUST NOT COLOUR. 150C for twelve to fourteen minutes. They are done while still pale -- browned, chickpea flour turns bitter.
  8. THEY ARE LEFT ON THE TRAY UNTIL COLD. With no gluten they have no structure while warm and will break if you move them. Twenty minutes on the tray first.
  9. THEY ARE ONE OF THE SEVEN SWEETS. Its article lists the seven made for the new year: sugared almonds, a pistachio and almond pastry, rice cookies, almond cookies, these chickpea cookies, honey almonds and walnut cookies. Four of the seven have their own pages here.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Iran · All recipes