Falafel

This week’s recipe was a request from a dear friend of mine who has asked me for plant based food ideas. So, here enters falafel! This is one of my most favourite things to make. It is so flavourful, it makes me feel like I have taken a journey from my kitchen to an exotic land. I love the smell of all the spices and the way the different flavours play on the tongue. Bonus! It is quick and easy you will not regret making it. These little balls/patties (depending on how you shape them) of chickpea goodness will have you coming back for more. The best part about falafel is the ability to freeze it down. This way you can defrost them ahead of time and fry them up for a quick and filling meal.

The recipe will yield about 13 to 14 falafel discs:

Ingredients:

• Two cups of dry chickpeas/chana (do not use canned chickpea, you will end up with chickpea mash not falafel)
• 1 teaspoon of whole cumin/jeera
• 1 teaspoon of ground cumin
• ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
• 2 pinches of green cardamom powder
• 1 ½ teaspoon of ground coriander seed
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons of corn flour or chickpea flour
• 1 large clove of garlic or two small ones
• 1 small red onion
• 1 full cup of chopped up parsley
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• Vegetable oil for frying (preferably one that does not have an over powering taste such as sunflower oil)

Instruments:

• Blender
• Spice mortar and pestle

Preparation:

• Put the chickpeas in deep bowl or pot and cover with water. You want the bowl to be deep enough to accommodate the chickpeas because they will swell up to two times their dry size. Just like beans. Soak them for 6 to 8 hrs or overnight.
• If you can find ground cardamom go ahead and use that. I couldn’t find that in the store so I bought green cardamom pods, broke them open to get the seeds and ground them up in my little mortar.
• Roughly chop onion and garlic, they don’t have to look pretty. They will end up in the blender

Method:

• Put chickpeas in the blender
• Add the onion, garlic, parsley, corn flour, all the spices and salt
• Blend until you get a quinoa or couscous like consistency; basically you don’t want your mixture to be puree, it should still be grainy but sticky enough to form a ball out of it. If your mixture is breaking apart blend a little while longer.
• To make the discs/balls I use two even tablespoons of mixture in my hand and make the desired shape
• Line a cutting board with baking paper and place the shaped mixture onto it
• At this point you can either place these in the freezer to be used later or you can fry them up until they are nicely browned, move them to a paper towel to soak off the excess oil and serve them warm

Tips:

• The mixture will not completely hold together the way a normal flour dough does, it will be a little crumbly, this is normal. Once they are fried they will hold together. However, if you are very concerned you may add one beaten egg to your mixture.

• I usually put the shaped, uncooked mixture in the freezer and they can keep for up to two weeks. They are perfect for you quick go to meal plans, if you want to have them for lunch the next day, you simply move them to the fridge, they thaw out overnight and you can fry them up in the morning so they are still nice and crunchy for you lunch! Although I wouldn’t recommend having this for lunch every day for obvious fried reasons.

Serving suggestion: this weekend I experimented with making my own pita pockets at home. I was very pleased with the results. Traditionally falafel is served with pita bread and topped with different ingredients such as lettuce, tomato, pickles, red onion, hummus and tahini. You can also just have this with a green salad, I really like to have it like this because falafel is really filling on its own.