We both love Middle Eastern / North African / Arabic food, but not necessarily the same fare. Justin regularly makes lamb and chicken dishes with ras el hanout mix, sumac or harissa.
I’m not a big fan of either of those spices and I find harissa too hot. I prefer paprika spiced cous-cous, tabbouleh, baba ganoush, hummus and falafel.
I’ve made all of the above except for the falafel. It’s something that I normally pick up on the deli counter at the supermarket, but this week I thought I’d make my own.
Falafel is so easy to make – just stick the ingredients into a food processor, whiz, chill and fry.
We’ll be having it with warm pitta, tomatoes, mixed salad leaves, coriander, yoghurt, chilli tomato sauce… and Justin will be adding a bit of the aforementioned ras el hanout and sumac to his!
Falafel
Ingredients
- 1 bunch spring onions roughly chopped
- 6 garlic cloves
- 200 g dried chickpeas soaked overnight (625g once soaked/tinned)
- 1 bunch coriander roughly chopped
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp chilli flakes
- 2 tsp cumin
- juice of ½ a lemon
- 75 g plain or gram flour
- Vegetable oil for shallow frying
Instructions
- In a food processor, pulse the spring onions and garlic cloves and pulse until finely minced
- Remove the mixture and set aside
- Add the chickpeas, coriander, salt, chilli flakes, cumin and lemon juice to the food processor and pulse until roughly chopped but not completely puréed
- Return the spring onion & garlic mixture to the food processor, along with just enough flour so that when you pulse the processor the mixture begins to form a ball and isn't sticky. Add more flour, tablespoon by tablespoon if the mixture is still too wet
- Transfer the mixture to a bowl, cover in cling film and refrigerate for an hour
- Once the mixture has chilled, use a small ice cream scoop or spoons to form the mixture into balls (roughly 3 tablespoons per ball). You can still add additional flour at this point, if the mixture is too wet to scoop.
- Put a large frying pan over medium heat and add a liberal amount of vegetable oil so you can shallow fry
- Allow the pan to pre-heat for 3 minutes before adding the falafel balls, one by one, flattening slightly, browning them on the first side for 3 minutes, then flipping them once and flattening and browning the second side until the mixture is cooked through
- Transfer the falafel to a wire cooling rack and immediately season them with salt. Repeat this process until all of the falafel have been cooked
- If you don't want to cook them all off, put the remaining uncooked balls onto a parchment lined tray, cover in cling film and put it in the freezer for an hour, remove and put the balls into a freezer bag and back into the freezer until ready to use