Falafel Recipe

With this recipe your gustatory perception will travel you to the Levant.

Falafel is one of the many shining stars in the Levantine Cuisine. Place and time of origin of the dish are not known, but it is likely to be very old. Some historians believe that it originated in Egypt, where it is also known as Ta’amia, and may have been created by the Christian Copts as a vegetarian dish during Lent. However, when it comes to history: Ignoramus et ignorabimus.

I’ll come now to the point.

Ingredients:

• As a rule of thumb: For every 2 cups of (dry! not canned) fava beans, add 1 cup of (dry! not canned) chickpeas
• Falafel spices: salt, cumin, black pepper, cayenne pepper, a little bit of cardamom
• 3–4–5 garlic cloves (as much as you like)
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley
• 1/3 cup chopped coriander
• 1 onion (alternative: 3–4 spring/green onions)
• Olive oil for frying
• Tomatoes, parsley, radish, pickled turnips (I’ll add my grandma’s pickles recipe at the end of this article) for the pita bread roll
• Tahini
• Lemon juice (1/2 lemon)

Preparation:

• Soak both the fava beans and chickpeas in cold water and leave them overnight

Instructions:

• Wash and rinse the fava beans & chickpeas and pour them into the kitchen processor.

• Add 1 spoon of carbonate (to make your Falafel rise a bit while frying). You will get a mixture that looks like this:

• Add the coriander, parsley, onions and spices into the processor.

• Then work both mixtures (the chickpeas, fava beans and the green things + spices) with your hands — like dough. The falafel mixture will have this colour:

Post scriptum: Crossing your Falafel mixture will guarantee 100% success!

• After ✞blessing, let the mixture rest for some 30 minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the ingredients for the pita bread roll. The deliciousness of the Falafel lies in the art of mixing different tastes and rolling them into a delicious pita bread wrap.

• You’ll need to chop some fresh parsley, radish, pickled turnips (I’ll add my grandma’s recipe for that below), tomatoes

• For the Tahini sauce, you need to mash 1 garlic clove using a pestle and mortar, add some salt, 1–2 big spoons of Tahini, and the juice of half a lemon and mix them till you get a creamy/fluid mixture

• Now heat the oil, form little balls from the Falafel mixture and throw them gently into the oil
• Typically the balls are formed in a special Falafel spoon

• The Falafels should become brown & crispy from the outside and would look like this:

• Now you can prepare your pita bread and add the fresh parsley, Tahini cream, pickled tunips, tomatoes, & radish, then roll it.

• Bon appétit!

My grandma’s pickled turnips recipe:

Rule of thumb: jar must be filled with 1/3 grape vinegar and 3/4 water + salt

• Boil the water and then let it cool before pouring it into the jar
• Add the salt to the cold water
• Add the vinegar — water + salt mixture into the jar
• Wash and cut turnips and fill the jar
• add only 1 beetroot to the jar to get the magical fuchsia color
• 2–3 days later you can enjoy your pickled turnips!