Falafel, Ta’amiya, Whatever You Call It, Here’s A Recipe!

Posted on March 13, 2012 by hijabman

Last week, I shared Amer‘s recipe for hummus and it got such a great response that I’m posting this falafel recipe a little bit early.  I’m gradually cutting more and more meat out of my diet, and as a result I have to come up with vegetarian dishes for dinner.   While deep frying isn’t exactly the healthiest thing in the world, it’s definitely a nice treat every now and then!  Just like the hummus recipe, this involves throwing everything in a food processor– the only extra step is frying.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb bag of dry chick peas (soaked overnight)
• 1 whole bulb of garlic
• 1 medium size onion
• 1 jalapeño
• 1 cup cilantro
• 1 cup Italian (It’s the flat-leaf kind) parsley
• 1 table spoon coriander powder (freshly ground if possible)
• 1 ½ teaspoon cumin powder (freshly ground if possible)
•  ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 ½ teaspoon (kosher or sea salt)
• pinch of baking soda
• oil to deep fry

Directions:

1. Add all the ingredients in the food processor except baking soda. Grind everthing into a very fine consistency so you can easily form into falafel balls. (You may
have to add the chick peas in two batches depending on the size of your food processor.)  I flattened my falafel balls a bit so they would cook faster.  They were around 1.5 ounces each before cooking.
2. Add the baking soda just before frying.
3. Fry in hot oil at 325-350 F and allow to drain over papertowels/cooling rack/whatever

Serving: 

You can eat em by themselves, you can serve em on a platter with hummus/some sort of tahina-based dip, or you can throw em in a pocket-pita with cucumber, tomato, tahina-based dip (baba ghanouj, hummus, etc).

How do you like to eat your falafel?