Ingredients
- 1 onion peeled
- 2 cloves of garlic peeled
- 500g soaked chickpeas (from 250 dried)
- 6 sprigs of parsley, picked
- a bunch of coriander (leaves and top part of stem)
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground cardamom pods
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 tbsp gram flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds
Preparation
- Soak chickpeas overnight or 8+ hours with plenty of water (they might double in weight)
- Roughly chop the onion, garlic, and herbs on a food processor
Before chopping garlic, coriander, etc - Add chickpeas and chop them too
- Tip the mix to a large bowl
- Mix in the spices, sesame seeds, salt, flour and baking powder. Combine all well together.
- Add oil to a pan and bring to a high heat
- Now, you can use damp hands to shape bits of the mix into balls or patties, or you can use two wooden spoons which is what I did, using one to scoop the mix out and the other one to flatten it a bit before placing it on the pan. Once it’s in the pan and it has settled a bit, I delicately flatten it further using the spoon.
- After a while, you will want to delicately turn them around, once they’re browned on one side. Be careful not to do it too early or they might crumb and break!
- When they are browned on both sides, take them out of the pan.
- You might want to add a bit more oil for the next batch.
- Repeat until you’re done with all the mix!
Background
I had a really disappointing experience with some supermarket-bought falafel recently. It was dry and crumbly, had no taste or kick whatsoever, and all in all, it was utterly dissatisfying. I should have known better, I know. I guess I was just very hopeful that day 😜
“Of course”, I thought, “it can’t be that hard to make falafel myself, as chickpeas are basically foolproof”.
So I searched for a falafel recipe. I found lots from US based writers which used ingredient names I’m not familiar with and I was quite suspicious of, and I was starting to feel a bit disappointed, until I had an illumination, and searched for “falafel honey and co”.
And my wish for a trustworthy looking recipe was fulfilled: Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer —or essentially, the “heads” of Honey & Co— went to Women’s Hour in BBC Radio 4, and shared their falafel recipe there.
BUT I do not have a fryer, and I didn’t want to use a lot of oil to fry the falafels. So I ended up flattening them; I figured that would increase the surface that was exposed to the heat. Which turned them into flat falafels. Or like chickpea fritters. Or patties. Or… any combination of the above. You can’t say cooking isn’t creative…
The end result isn’t the prettiest, but the taste was really good, and that’s even if I didn’t follow the recipe to the letter: I forgot to add a green chilli, and I doubled the amount of other ingredients so I could have a larger batch… except for baking powder and spices, which I wasn’t quite confident about (specially baking powder-it’s got a great ability to ruin things if you add too much of it). Also, their recipe doesn’t mention sesame seeds in the list of ingredients, but then it does when it asks you to add sesame seeds to the mix. And you’re left wondering: “WHICH sesame seeds?!”
The fantastic garlic kick reminded me a bit to the cod croquettes which my grandma used to make (except you can’t find fishbones, yay!). It even made me think that maybe it could also work if adding pine nuts, like in my grandma’s recipe. After all, there are very few things in the world that will not be improved by adding pine nuts to them.
They combined well with salad, as they can be a bit dry on their own.
Maybe a yoghurt and cucumber sauce could work too, but we didn’t have any on the fridge. Instead, I tried making a very purist allioli, with just garlic and olive oil, but it didn’t work, mostly because I was using a blender instead of a pestle and mortar. Something to experiment with some other day. That said, the garlic and oil sauce was great anyway—and we felt very confident that no vampire would get close to our household, haha!
Honey & co don’t recommend reheating, but I did warm them slightly on the microwave the next day before placing them on top of my salad and they were still very nice.
A final warning: this dish is a bit laborious; chopping the ingredients can be tiring if your blender decides to get temperamental (as mine did), and you might need to do it in small batches so it takes longer than it should. I’d personally advise making this on a day where you can take your time and not fall asleep over the bowl. Or getting a mega food processor and blitzing through the chickpeas in two nanoseconds (so to speak!) 🙂