Meatballs and chickpea flour

Ingredients for people 4

• 500 g of minced lean beef or veal
• 1-2 medium onions
• A few tablespoons of toasted chickpea flour
• A few handfuls of dried yellow peas (lappeh)
• 5 whole eggs
• 3 medium potatoes
• 1 satin teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in 3 tablespoons of water
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 teaspoon of powdered saffron pistils dissolved in a little hot water
• 1 we cook turmeric
• 1 teaspoon of mixed Iranian spices (advieh)
• Fry oil

Preparation

Boil the peas in boiling water. Boil the potatoes and let them cool. Fry the finely chopped onions over medium heat and add the minced meat, cooking until it appears dry and completely cooked. Add the peas, season with salt and pepper and leave to cool. Break the eggs into a bowl, add the saffron dissolved in a little hot water, the baking soda and, if you like, a pinch of turmeric, the well-mashed potatoes (or reduced into thin pieces with a vegetable peeler); finally incorporate the first dough into the second and mix everything thoroughly. Heat two fingers of oil in a pan. When it is hot, take a quantity of filling equal to about a small mandarin and form an oval-shaped meatball 1,5 cm high. To facilitate this operation the first few times you can pass the meatballs in a little breadcrumbs. Traditional shami want a hole in the center the size of your index finger. After having pierced them, bread them if necessary, then fry them in oil until they appear swollen and golden. The flame must be moderate to allow the inside of the meatballs to cook perfectly as well. The only difficulty of this recipe lies in getting the right consistency of the dough, calibrating the quantity of the different ingredients so that the meatballs do not break once immersed in oil. To this end, keep in mind that to make the dough more compact you can add an egg, in addition to those indicated, or a greater quantity of toasted chickpea flour. The baking soda instead serves to make them swell well during cooking.
A variant of the recipe does not use potatoes. I strongly recommend it, even less if necessary the quantity of meat replacing it with more potatoes. The taste is more appetizing and the consistency is better.