One of my favorite memories as a child is spending our summers traveling with my family. We often spent the summer either in France visiting my mom’s family or in Jordan visiting my dad’s family. We took lots of little side trips from there, so I’ve been lucky to explore a lot of Europe and the Middle East. Looking back at my time in the Middle East, I have to say that probably my favorite thing was waking up to a family style breakfast every morning, complete with fresh hummus and falafel, plates of bright vegetables and fruits from the garden, and of course some mint tea. There’s nothing better.
While Dallas is pretty fortunate to have some great Middle Eastern restaurants, it is incredibly hard to replicate the taste of freshly fried falafel on the streets of Amman. That being said, I’m always on the hunt for a great falafel recipe, but it’s been hard to find. Many of the recipes I’ve found try to make the falafel healthier by baking them. While, they may indeed be healthier, they taste nothing like the fried balls of goodness I was craving. SO, if you’re contemplating baking these, DON’T! You’ve got to fry them to get that crunch. Trust me, it is absolutely worth those extra calories. The other key aspect of making great falafel is starting with dried chick peas and soaking them overnight rather than using canned chick peas. It creates the perfect texture. It may require a little bit of planning ahead, but again, so worth it.
A few months back, I was looking for a new cookbook on Amazon and I stumbled upon a book called “Palestine on a Plate“. I read about two reviews before I decided I had to have this book. When I got the book, one of the first recipes I looked up was for falafel. I’d kept it bookmarked for a day that we had a little extra time to prep them and that day finally came! What better way to spend a Friday night than frying up some falafel with your best friend?
The ingredients are simple – dried chick peas, onion, garlic, fresh parsley, fresh cilantro, ground coriander, salt, pepper, and some sesame seeds for topping. I highly recommend a food processor or very powerful blender for making the paste, otherwise you’ll end up with some clumpy falafel, which no one wants. We used our Vitamix and worked in batches. It worked wonderfully.
We made plenty and actually froze about half of the recipe. I can’t wait to pull those out on a busy weeknight for a delicious dinner. Once the falafel are formed, they are ready for frying. They only need about 7 minutes to cook, you’ll know they’re done with they have a beautiful dark brown color on the outside. Best eaten immediately.
We opted to make falafel sandwiches, complete with a delicious tahini yogurt sauce from the same cookbook, but added a little garlic for good measure and some harissa for a spicy kick. Oh, and also french fries, because what goes better with a falafel sandwich than french fries? Shout out to Sara’s Market Bakery for the perfect pita bread.
If you like Middle Eastern food at all, I HIGHLY encourage you to check out this cookbook. It’s only about $25 on Amazon, and totally worth it. I will absolutely be trying out plenty of her other recipes (tahini brownies anyone??).
Happy Saturday everyone!
-The Migoni Kitchen