I was able to rope my little sister Michelle into helping me attempt to make falafel. I had first tried falafel when I was studying abroad in Europe and I really enjoyed it. So I hoped to recreate that at home and have others try it too. First, here's the recipe:
Ingredients - Cucumber Sauce
1 (6 oz) container plain yogurt
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
1 tsp. dried dill weed
salt and pepper to taste
1 Tbs. mayonnaise
Directions - Cucumber Sauce
1. In a small bowl, combine yogurt, cucumber, dill, salt, pepper, and mayonnaise. Chill for at least 30 minutes.
Ingredients - Falafel
1 (15 oz) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained
1 onion, chopped
1/2 C. fresh parsley
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 egg
2 tsps. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. salt
1 dash pepper
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. baking powder
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 C. dry bread crumbsoil for frying
Directions - Falafel
1. In a large bowl, mash chickpeas until thick and pasty. Don't use a blender as the consistency will be too thin. In a blender, process onion, parsley, and garlic until smooth. Stir into mashed chickpeas.
2. In a small bowl, combine egg, cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, cayenne, lemon juice and baking powder. Stir into chickpea mixture along with olive oil. Slowly add bread crumbs until mixture is not sticky but will hold together. Add more or less bread crumbs as needed. Form 8 balls and then flatten into patties.
3. Heat 1 inch of oil in a large skillet over medium-hight heat. Fry patties in hot oil until brown on both sides.
Now here is my response to it! About the preparation and cooking...I made the cucumber sauce first so it could be chilling while I made the falafel. With the falafel, the chickpeas were hard to mash! If I had something that mashed them really well, it would have helped a lot with the time and effort involved. Next, it called for one onion, but I only put in half. I felt I had a really big onion and to have put it all in would have been overwhelming. Perhaps you could try to whole onion and let me know. Next, I don't think you need nearly that much parsley. It turned the whole thing a vivid green and that didn't help with making it very appetizing. However, once browned, you couldn't tell as much. The onion gave me a hard time - I was crying from the get-go! Even mixing the onion/parsley/garlic mixture into the chickpeas made me cry! Which is another reason I think a whole onion would have been too much :) My sister accidentally put in a whole tsp of pepper and tried to fix it so our seasoning may have been a little off. It's ok Michelle :) Now when I ate falafel in Europe, I had them in balls so I did not make mine into patties. That may have altered our cooking experience a bit. When we tried to cook them, they fell apart! We ended up adding another 2 cups of bread crumbs to the mixture we had not started cooking. That batch ended up turning out all right. I attempted to save the first batch by taking them out of the oil (they were pretty soaked by then), adding more bread crumbs, and then frying them on a bare skillet, no oil (considering they were already oil-logged!). Those fell apart a little still but I blame it on having too much oil in them. In the end, we had about 10 really well formed falafel balls, a couple iffy ones, and a bit of mash that we just put into a bowl! However, they were a pretty good hit considering my 11 year old little brother ate a whole sandwich and he is extremely picky!! And my one year old son ate a bunch too. I just put some on his high chair and he snatched it right up. We served them in a pita with the cucumber sauce, lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, olives and mozzarella cheese. They tasted pretty darn close to what I had in Europe. These won't be something I make once a week, but it was fun to have something new and something unique to try to give variety to my menu. It is also pretty healthy! I welcome your comments both on preparation, ingredients, anything I could do differently, etc. Thanks!
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