Falafel - 4 of 366 creative days

4/366

This is for forth day of 366 creative days.

   I never liked falafel too much, maybe because was always stuffed in a pita roll mixed with potatoes, salad and some other things, so I couldn't feel the taste too well, or maybe cause wasn't properly done, who knows.
   But things changed when a very ill friend of mine said that is better for her not to eat toxic things, one of them being meat so she replaced it with falafel. She was wondering how is done cause was a bit too pricey to buy it in those pita rolls I was talking earlier.
   And I started to search over the internet for a good recipe with easy to reach ingredients and not much of a work. Discovered a recipe on BBC site close to my wishes but still needed improving to get to my taste. So here is the story of how I made falafel...

1. Falafel ingredients

   First I forgot to measure the cups of dried chickpeas for the recipe and put placed all the half kilo I had in a bowl, covered it with water and added 2 teaspoons of baking soda. Left it there delaying and delaying to start to make the recipe for around 24 hours. When I finally decided to start sort of figure it out that it should be 3 and half cups of soaked chickpeas. As you can see the 1 and 2 in the picture, dry chickpeas doubles it's size.

2. Chopped chickpeas for falafel

  Then my hand blender started it's job and got hot very fast. Did some pauses to let it cool but ended with some smoke coming out from some of it's holes. Then, the stronger hand of the family finished the job while saying "is nothing creative in mashing by hand chickpeas and sweating like hell". I added the rest of the ingredients(1 tablespoon cumin, 1 teaspoon salt,  1/2 teaspoon black pepper, a pinch of chili, 1 medium chopped onion, 3-4 cloves of garlic crushed and 1 cup of parsley parsley) and tried to use the blender again, but only got some weird noises like was trying to tell me: go away! So I mixed by hand, like a dough.
   Because the parsley was chopped with the thought that will end up in the blender, it looked a bit big, like grass coming out from the ground. I have done a ball to test and it seem all loose and thought it will spread in the pan so I beat up and egg very fast, just in case. Impressive but it wasn't needed at all!

3. Falafel - before and after frying

   I placed in  frying pan about 2 cm oil and set it to a medium cause I am very bad with frying, I either burn or not cook enough the dishes. When the oil was hot enough I placed the test ball and miracle, didn't spread, and slowly went brown but without burning, even I left it there for more than 2 minutes on every side. So be sure you have some dishes in the sink cause you will get bored while waiting, one dish here, turning the balls there and all will be done in at least 30-40 minutes. That unless you are an experienced cook and set the heat higher.
   The taste was better than imagined, really crunchy and with some sour yogurt, like the greek strained one is a miracle. You can eat it warm or let it cool, is good anyway, but don't let it till next  day to get the humidity in, is not that good, and very hard to chew.


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