Thursday, May 8, 2008

Falafel

Last night for dinner we had falafel in a pita with tabbouleh. I've eaten falafel a number of times, but this was my first attempt at making them. All in all I'd say it was almost a success. They tasted delicious, they were devoured by the girls (always a sign of success), and Rob and I were left longing for more. Frying was the unsuccessful part. I SUCK at frying things (which, I guess if you're gonna be bad at something, frying is probably a good thing to be bad at!!). My things never turn out evenly browned, and it just never seems to work out quite right. The recipe came from a cookbook that a friend gave me, Vegetarian and Vegetable Cooking. You can find falafel recipes all over the web, but this one is just the basics. Chickpeas, cilantro, parsley, mint, garlic and bread crumbs all pulsed together in the food processor, rolled into balls and fried.

I served the falafels stuffed in whole wheat pitas with lettuce, tomato, onion, and cucumber. Along with the falafels we had some tabbouleh. I didn't use a recipe for this. Just cook the bulgur, and add in one large tomato, chopped, one medium onion chopped, and 1 medium cucumber diced small. Then flavor it all with lemon juice, olive oil, chopped parsley and chopped mint to taste.

3 comments:

Amy said...

Must have been the day for it. I made felafel too but I overprocessed mine a little so they were really smooth textured which was a bit wrong (but they tasted fine!).

You can bake felafel, 180C (I think 350F?) for about 20 minutes, turning over after 10 or until they're brown. They're slightly drier but I have them with sauce usually anyway (and lettuce and tomato).

Yours look yummy, your frying skills look good :)

J said...

Your falafel looks great! You'd have never known you aren't good at frying. They look good to me! (I do agree though, if you are going to suck at something it might as welll be frying.)

Susan Chipley said...

Well, it looks like it turned out much better than my feeble attempt at falafel a couple of months ago! Frying is indeed tricky. I like Vegetation's baking idea. Hmmmm. I think I'll attempt falafel in the near future.