I have several friends who, unlike me, are vegan and hence do not eat eggs. Can you advise what I can use in place of eggs to bind food together. For example, I love to cook chickpea fritters and other recipes that require 1 or 2 eggs to bind the mixture in order that they hold together when shallow frying.

I also wonder what can be used instead of beaten egg to 'stick' pastry sheets together before baking.

Tinto.

Hello Tinto

In Indian cooking, besan or black chickpea flour is often used as a binding agent because many Indian vegetarians, though not vegan, do not eat eggs. Egg is considered as the beginning of life. It not being fertilised these days doesn't make any difference. If it was fertilised, it would be potentially live!

Besan flour is made from Bengal gram, Cicer arietinum or black chick pea or kala chana, a smaller variety of the chickpea that you use to make fritters. Sometimes, ordinary white flour or even arrowroot powder is also used as a binding agent.

Mamta

Supposedly Arrowroot stops ice crystals forming in home made icecream...

That is why it is added to the 'Kulfi, Indian ice-cream ;-)! See; http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=10082

Mamta