Over the weekend, I helped host a friend’s Bachelorette party on the roof of an apartment building in Midtown Detroit. My food contribution was a homemade falafel recipe that I had made once before with success. [Others I’ve tried were not nearly as successful (can we say “falafel waffle”?)] Since we were expecting 20+ girls, I doubled the recipe. It did end up being just the right amount of food, but please beware, DO NOT double the recipe unless you are feeding 20 people. Even one batch is quite a lot of falafel 🙂
Now, two days later, people are still asking me for the falafel recipe, so I wanted to publicly share it, and give credit to its author, Elephantastic Vegan.
Ingredients:
- 2½ cups / 500g dried chickpeas
- 2 onions
- 4 garlic cloves
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- lemon juice of 1 lemon
- 1 bunch of fresh parsley
- ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ground pepper
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ⅓ cup / 30g besan/chickpea flour
- ⅛ cup / 30ml olive oil
- 1 teaspoon canola oil
- Put the dry chickpeas in a large bowl, cover with enough water (the chickpeas will double in size!) and let them sit covered overnight.
- Pre-heat the oven to 400°F/200°C.
- Peel the onions and garlic cloves. Put them in a food processor and chop.
- In a pan with a teaspoon of canola oil, add the chopped onions, garlic & cumin and let it cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until they starten to brown.
- Drain the chickpeas and then work in batches by adding the first batch into the food processor and chop until the pieces are really small (you don’t want to make hummus). In one batch add in the parsley to chop it as well. Repeat until all the chickpeas are used. Transfer everything to a huge bowl.
- Add the lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt, ground pepper, baking powder and the onions and garlic. Mix well.
- Add in the chickpea flour and olive oil. Mix the chickpea mixture well and form little balls. If the dough does not stick together enough, add more chickpea flour and oil.
- Put the falafel on a baking tray and put them in the oven for about 25 minutes or until they turn golden.
- You can eat the falafel like that or put them in a pan with a little oil for re-heating when you need them. They freeze very well, so you will have a nice stash of homemade falafel in your freezer, which is super convenient 😉
Note: For this party, I did fry them in a pan instead of baking them. It was a special occasion 🙂
Photo credit: Royce Mathew
The beautiful bride-to-be!
real food. home made. 