Falafel are great in theory, but rarely in practice. In theory, they're filling and nutricious, taste great, and they can be frozen and reheated easily. In practice, they often taste weird, are too heavy or greasy, or feature almost-raw beans that will haunt you for days. This is true of falafel in the US as well as in Egypt. Nevertheless, I decided I would try to come up with an ideal falafel that would taste great but wouldn't have any of the shortcomings above.
My first try was a recipe from RecipeSource that called for chickpeas, eggs, bread, parsley, onions, bread crumbs, cumin seeds and other less interesting ingredients. The result was OK, but it didn't quite taste right, and it was pretty heavy.
So I consulted my mother, who told me that the traditional green color of falafel comes from leeks and parsley. Leeks, for crying out loud. I didn't even know what they looked like, and no recipe that I saw mentioned them. Still, that sounded right. She also told me that the traditional beans are fool (fava beans), which are soaked until they split and left raw (hello nightmares). Fava beans are hard to come by here, and I was out of chickpeas, so I tried cooked pinto beans (fresh, not canned). I also added half of the white part of a leek, some parsley, baking powder (substituting for baking soda which is supposed to add puffiness), cumin seeds, a couple of green chilies, quarter of an onion, and processed it all. The result was not firm enough to be shaped in balls. I'm not sure if that was intrinsic to the ingredient proportions, or if there was just too much water on the vegetables. In any case, I added some bread, and that was still not enough. I could have added more, but I was out of bread, so I added an egg, and finally some flour. With all these additions I overprocessed the paste, so it was not chunky enough. Still, when we fried the balls the taste was pretty much right, and they were reasonably light. I made some makeshift tehina with yogurt, lime juice and some spices, and had the falafel on bread with the sauce and some lettuce and tomatoes. I froze the leftover balls, and broiled them for a couple of minutes on a cookie sheet a few days later. They still tasted great and were still reasonably crunchy.
All in all I think I should not have to add so much "glue" to the paste. Next time I'll
try to make sure the vegetables and beans are dry, and at most add some bread. I think the
cumin seeds are an indispensable ingredient, and the green chilies add a little bit of zing
to the mixture.
Katia Hayati
Last updated October 27, 2004