Recipe: Falafel

This one is surprisingly easy, so it works pretty well if you're pressed for time. If you want to make a larger quantity, double the quantity of chickpeas, red onion, garlic and coriander used).

Ingredients:
400g of chickpeas
One red onion
Two clove of garlic
One teaspoon of cumin
A large handful of coriander
Half a teaspoon of chilli powder
Half a teaspoon of paprika
Two tablespoons of plain flour (I used wholemeal)
A liberal sprinkling of salt
Sunflower oil for frying

Method:

Roughly chop the half onion, garlic clove and coriander, and leave it to one side.

Open the can of chickpeas, drain them and dry them with some kitchen towel.

Combine all the ingredients above (minus the sunflower oil) in a food processor and blitz them until the mixture is smooth and can easily be moulded (if you can imagine shaping them into balls as you would do with dough then it should be okay).

Roll them into balls and flatten them into disk shaped patties. I made them pretty small (and came out with twelve), but you could make them bigger, though it would make fewer.

Put them in the fridge to chill for a bit (well, around fifteen minutes). This isn't essential though.

Once out of the refrigerator heat the sunflower oil in a large pan and fry them until they are golden brown on each side. It's important to use kitchen roll once you've fried the falafel and removed them from the pan as it will soak up the excess oil.

We ate the falafel with wholemeal pitta bread, chopped raw onion and homemade tamarind sauce (which I didn't and don't know how to make, otherwise I'd have posted a recipe). I also tried experimenting with mixed greens, but these really did not complement the rest of the meal, so much so that I ended up picking them out. I feel like Greek yoghurt and/or cucumber might also go well, but what do I know. I put mixed greens in mine and it was slightly awful.