When I was writing my book, Chickpea Flour Does It All, I wanted to include a variety of recipes for kitchen staples that would make weeknight dinners more practical—so that regardless of the time of year, you could always have a go-to meal.
In my own life, I generally make a few go-to staples on Sunday of every week—it makes dinners and Not Sad Desk Lunches much easier to put together.
No-Gadget Falafel (Falafel without a Food Processor)
World's Easiest Falafel and Tzatziki
Take falafel, for instance. Falafel is the perfect compact meal: full of protein, tons of flavor, and, most importantly, can be repurposed into a variety of meals throughout the week. Typically, falafel are made with chickpeas, but this recipe uses toasted, nutty chickpea flour with mung beans and quinoa to form its base instead.
Quinoa and Chickpea Flour Falafel with Romesco Sauce
I like starting the week with a simple falafel plate served with an easy blender romesco sauce and a light salad. And the falafel recipe provides plenty of leftovers for things like falafel tacos, falafel and slaw sliders, falafel toast with fried eggs, and chopped falafel salad.
On Sunday, or at the beginning of the week, start by making:
1 batch of quinoa and chickpea flour falafel (or your other favorite falafel recipe)
1 batch of romesco sauce
A basic vinaigrette
Quinoa and Chickpea Flour Falafel with Romesco Sauce View Recipe
Cucumbers, herbs, red onion, and other salad ingredients
Once you've done that, putting it all together is easy:
1) Falafel tacos
Top warm tortillas with salad greens, falafel, a simple avocado and radish salad, and some chopped cilantro. Then douse the whole thing with tahini sauce.
To 1/4 cup of unsweetened Greek or non-dairy yogurt, add 1 tablespoon of the romesco sauce and stir to combine. Spread a good amount of the romesco yogurt on each side of toasted rolls or hamburger buns. Add two or three warm falafel and top with slaw.
3) Falafel toast
Heat a couple of falafel in the oven, then mash onto toast. Top with greens, a fried egg, za’atar, and salt. This is also a good time to use up any extra avocado you may have.
4) Falafel salad
Toss chopped cucumbers, herbs, red onion, leftover radishes or other vegetables with salad greens, then top with some crumbled or cubed falafel. Add a tablespoon or so of leftover tahini sauce to your basic vinaigrette for a creamier dressing.
Plus, now that you're stocked with chickpea flour, there's plenty to do with that, too:
Savory Vegan Chickpea Crêpes With Vegetable Ragout
Chickpea Fettuccine with Harissa, Kale, and Olives
There are three types of falafel--Traditional falafel, baked falafel and lemon falafel. “Where the traditional falafel is the basic fried falafel comprising a mix of chickpeas, onions, garlic, herbs and spices, baked falafels are made using fresh herbs in the chickpea mixture,” says Chef Sati from Ophelia.
A binding ingredient can help keep it together, especially if you are using canned beans instead of dried. And the perfect binding ingredient for falafel is flour. Nothing fancy, just plain all-purpose flour. Add a few tablespoons at a time to your mixture, until you can press it easily into balls or patties.
Baking soda and powder: Baking soda breaks down and softens the chickpeas as they soak. Baking powder, mixed in just before baking, makes the falafel light and airy. Fresh herbs: The tender leaves of parsley, dill, and cilantro bring fresh, herbal flavor and color.
Falafel are deep-fried balls or patties made from chickpeas or fava beans, sometimes both, plus fresh herbs and spices. Falafel is a popular Middle Eastern street food sold from vendors or fast-casual spots in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Israel, where it's the national dish.
Canned chickpeas do not work for falafel. They're far too wet. If you try to use canned chickpeas instead of dried and soaked chickpeas, you'll end up with sad falafel pancakes. Some recipes try to counteract the wetness by adding flour, which significantly dulls the flavor and makes the texture more doughy.
In some ways, falafel's nutritional profile stacks up to red meat, since it's also full of nutrients like iron, folate, magnesium and vitamin B, Zozos says.
If the mixture is too wet, the falafel has a tendency to fall apart when being fried so please pat dry the ingredients before using them. If you find the mixture is too wet, simply add little more breadcrumbs. The falafel mixture after prepared can be shaped by hand or with a tool called an alb falafel (falafel mold).
Served deliberately cold, perhaps from a supermarket supermarket chiller cabinet, falafel become gritty truffles of tedium, as tasteless as packing foam. As the food writer Daniel Young once put it: “It must be eaten hot and fresh.
The chickpeas should be tender enough to break apart with your fingers, but still have a bite to them. While the chickpeas soak, you can make tzatziki, chop tomatoes and lettuce, and assemble the other falafel ingredients.
To help out, I often stir a little flour into the mixture along with some baking powder — the flour binds the falafel together while the baking powder helps keep them from being too dense. Resting the mixture overnight before baking the patties also helps them hold together a little better.
Falafel is usually made with fava beans in Egyptian cuisine, with chickpeas in Palestinian cuisine, or either just chickpeas or a combination of both in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The most common way to eat falafel is by putting it inside a pitta bread and adding tomatoes, cucumber and pickled onions before topping with hummus, tahini or a spicy sauce.
In Greece we make something which is similar to Falafels, called Revithokeftedes. However, they are quite different in taste, as in Greece we boil the chickpeas and the spices used are much different.
Falafel is a popular Middle Eastern “fast food” made of a mixture of chickpeas (or fava beans), fresh herbs, and spices that are formed into a small patties or balls. It's thought that falafel originated in Egypt as Coptic Christians looked for a hearty replacement for meat during long seasons of fasting or lent.
Why are chickpea falafels green? Falafel lovers will tell you that authentic falafels should be crispy (deep-fried) and green on the inside. That green color comes from fresh herbs like cilantro and parsley. These green falafels are green through and through and also include those fragrant fresh herbs.
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