Hybrid Falafel

How have I had no time to blog?? Things have not been particularly busy, but we’ve been doing a lot of running around and planning and even some relaxing! Plus, Santana has been a fussy fussy pup…not always wanting to eat her breakfast/dinner, sometimes giving us the pleasure of waking up to some hidden spots of vomit in the dining room and all around being a bit fussier than normal.  We have a vet appointment in a couple weeks and hopefully things get all fixed up (if there’s anything wrong to fix).  A quick recipe until I can catch up with some of my other back-logged meals!

Hybrid Falafel: the falafel of the future (said in a deep booming voice, of course)

I have made falafel at home a few different ways.  The first few times, we used a mix (on the left in the first picture below).  All you do is add a bit of water to the dry mix, let it sit for ten minutes, form into balls and fry.  It’s pretty tasty. The texture is not nearly as wonderful as freshly made falafel at some great Greek restaurant, but it was easy, fairly cheap, and the perfect amount for the two of us.  A success.

The second attempt was a baked falafel from scratch, using bulgur and chickpeas and lots of yummy spices that made a really tasty (and much healthier/fresher) version of falafel.  We used these for leftovers and even froze some for later.  I thought they were a tiny dry and wanted to work on the texture. 

This brought us to the hybrid falafel I concocted last week.  They turned out really well, and I’ll probably stick with this method from here on out, with a few adjustments in spices and mix-ins.

• 1 package dry falafel mix
• 3/4 can chickpeas, drained
• 4 small carrots (ours were super small, 1 large would do the trick), shredded
• spices and seasoning to taste (I used a little cumin, garlic powder and onion powder in my mix, but could have used some fresh chopped or grated onion instead to bump up the moisture)

1. Prepare falafel mix according to directions and let sit.
2. While it is soaking, mash chickpeas and add other ingredients.
3. Combine the two mixes into a really pretty, mushy mixture.
4. Bake!!! I think we went with 425 degrees, 10 minutes per side.

We turned these falafel into a salad with some really wonderful tomatoes, some fresh croutons made from a french baguette that was getting stale, some chopped spring onion and some toasty crisped chickpeas (tossed with some spice and baked in the toaster oven for a while). 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Blog Fun, Leftovers, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.