Sicilian cuisine has never included the appetizer in the true meaning of the term. Rather than elaborate foods, to start a meal, it was preferred to consume seafood, olives and anchovies, snails, etc. Nowadays, however, it is easy to find tables set with a rich variety of dishes in restaurants and trattorias. Even if we cannot speak of appetizers, however, in Sicilian cuisine there are some easy recipes whose main goal is to reduce the natural voracity of people and that can be considered kinds of appetizers. One of these is the “panelle”, one of the traditional street food in Palermo and a vegan option as well. They are simple chickpea flour fritters, rectangular in shape (4 x 8 cm), and about 2 or 3 mm thick. Here’s the authentic Sicilian recipe.
For 6 people, melt 200 g of chickpea flour in half a liter of cold salted water together with some chopped parsley. Put the pan on the heat and, mixing continuously, cook until you get a rather dense and homogeneous mixture. Spread the mixture, still hot, into rectangular wooden molds – or over a baking pan, dividing it into rectangular shapes 3 x 1,5 inches (4 x 8 cm). When the mixture cools down, remove the panelle from the molds (or from the baking pan) and fry them in hot seed oil. Before serving, add a pinch of lemon juice.
