Maple Roasted Cremlings
Greetings food adventurers! Today we explore a bit more of the planet of Roshar and enjoy a tasty travel snack of Maple Roasted Cremlings. Our vegan version uses garbanzo beans! These tasty crunchy snacks can be eaten by the handful, or used as a garnish on soup or salad.
Some orientation if you have not visited Roshar before: “Crem” is the term on Roshar for the clay-like sediment left behind by highstorms (regularly occurring hurricanes that sweep the entire continent). Cremling is the name given to many of the small critters that live in the crem; it isn’t so much a type of creature as a category of them. Some of them, to me, look a lot like garbanzo beans. Many are edible. These are not high-class things for eating but they are plentiful and are a common food across much of Roshar.
Today we are traveling in a wagon pulled by chulls (horse-sized crustaceans trained as beasts of burden), and we are offered crunchy roasted cremlings as trail snacks. Well, we are not going to turn down trail snacks! Maple trees don’t exist on Roshar but they have different types of sweeteners derived from the various rockbuds and vine plants that taste pretty close.
The trick to making these is to use a tea towel to gently rub the beans until the skins loosen. Remove and discard the skins, while being careful to keep the beans whole. This is quite an annoying and tedious process but it’s worth the effort. The bean skins prevent the beans from getting the lovely crispiness we want. You don’t have to get 100% of them, but the more you get, the better the end result will be. Using paper towels instead of a tea towel can be a challenge; they tend to get soggy pretty quickly and need to be replaced several times during the process. That gets annoying and is also a waste – a towel can just be tossed into the laundry after.
The sugar in this recipe makes the timing a bit tricky – a minute too short and they will not be crunchy; a minute too long and they can burn. Keep a close eye on them during the last five minutes or so, and keep track of how long you cook them for so you’ll know the correct time for your specific oven.
Inspired by Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series.
Maple Roasted Cremlings
Special Equipment
- Large rimmed baking sheet
- Strainer for rinsing the chickpeas
Ingredients
- 2 15 oz can Garbanzo Beans (chickpeas)
- 2 Tbsp oil (peanut, avocado, whatever you like)
- 3 Tbsp maple syrup
- 2 Tbsp brown sugar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp table salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Rinse and drain the chickpeas
- Carefully roll the chickpeas in a tea towel and remove as many of the skins as you can. (Don't skip this! Beans with the skins on do not get crunchy.)
- In a medium bowl, combine the oil, maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt.
- Pour the skinned chickpeas into the maple syrup mixture. Toss gently until chickpeas are well coated, being careful to keep the chickpeas whole.
- Place the chickpeas on a large rimmed baking sheet.
- Place in the oven and bake for 45 minutes, stirring at the 15-minute mark, at 30 minutes, at 38 minutes, and keep a very close eye (and nose!) on them for the last 7 minutes to prevent the sugar from burning.
- The garbanzos will crisp up as they cool down – wait until they are fully cool to eat them.
