Falafel

For this week's Blogging Marathon I have picked "Pick one Category, do 3 or Do one from each category". I decided to do one from each category. Today I have picked up List_of_fried_dough_foods. Valli has requested me to pick up recipes which are not Indian. So here I am posting FALAFEL - a traditional middle eastern food

Falafel is a deep-fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas, fava beans, or both. I have used chick peas here. I found many variations of this recipe in internet. After reading all I understood that it is basically our vada made with chick peas (kondai kadalai in tamil).   

From internet I also understood that most of the time falafel is used as a patty inside a sandwich. But for us it tasted more like vada and we enjoyed it as it is. Also falafel is made in various shapes like balls or donut shaped. There is also a tool available in the name of "aleb falafel" to shape these falafels. Falafel is a very famous street food. 

Another change or I don't know if I should say improvement - is that I have tried to capture some step-wise snaps :-). At least for the important steps. Will try to do so more often. I understand that step-wise snaps are more helpful for my readers but most of the time I make recipes in hurry. I will have to plan more efficiently my future recipes.

Ingredients:

Dried chickpea / Kabuli Channa - 150 grams

Onions - 1 medium

Coriander leaves, chopped - 2 tbsp

Garlic - 3 pods

Salt to taste

Cumin seeds - 1 tsp

Red chilly - 2 nos

All purpose flour / Maida - 3 tbsp

Oil for deep frying

Method:

Wash and soak the chickpeas overnight or atleast for 8 hours.

In a mixer take the soaked chickpeas (without water), along with onions, garlic, cumin seeds, coriander leaves and salt. Pulse into a coarse mixture

Transfer to a bowl. Add flour an mix everything together. 

Form into small medium sized patties. Heat oil in a kadai and deep fry in batches.

Drain into tissues and serve hot.

Falafels are ready!!! Serve with sauce or chutney of your choice. We had it plain!!!

Notes:

• While researching on Falafel I also saw that Falafel (falafil) in arabic meant pepper. So adding pepper powder would be an apt choice I believe.
• I added only 2 red chillies. But after preparing the first batch we felt it needs to be more spicy. Chick peas has a very little sweetening taste so I added 1/2 tsp of chilly powder for the remaining mixture.
• The mixture can be refrigerated as such or make patties and refrigerate and fry them just before serving.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM