Food Adventure #3: Falafel

This suggestion came from my roommate who personally loves falafel.  All I knew about this food was that it came in a package, my roommate makes balls out of it, and eats it in pita bread.  Not much.

So...  Back to google!

"Falafel is a deep-fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas, fava beans, or both.  Falafel is a tranditional Arab Food; usually served in a pita, which acts as a pocket, or wrapped in a flabread known as lafa.  The falafel balls are topped with salads, pickled vegetables, hot sauce, and drizzled with tahini-based sauces.  Falafal balls may also be eating alone as a snack or served as part of a meze."

Thanks Wiki!  So I've gone from Indonesian soy beans to Arab chickpeas/fava beans.  Cool.

It took a trip through the "healthy food" area in the grocery store to find falafel.  I'll admit I was actually looking for something else and happen to see it.  Either way, it made it home. 

As I said before with Tempeh, I'm not a fan of fried foods.  I'm also not a fan of deep frying foods because it wastes a lot of oil.  So I opted for the above-mentioned patty option and decided to go with baking.  I made balls, compressed them to patties, and drizzled oil on them.

It was a messy experiment!

 I put them in the oven for about 10 minutes on each side.  I'm sorry, I don't recall the oven temp I used; most likely 375.  I flipped them after 10 minutes and they were already falling apart.  When they were done, I pulled them out and had them with some baked mushrooms; a favorite food of mine.

Wow!!  Talk about processed foods!  The spices added into the boxed mix were extremely overpowering.  I had to pull out the Honey Mustard just to cover up some of the flavor of the falafel.

Immediately I knew that this boxed falafel was not going to work in any way I cook it; baked, deep-fried ball, or pan-fried patty.  But I still had mix and my roommate strongly suggested frying it, so I did.

With the same size patties shown above, I heated up a pan of oil and attempted frying falafel.  That was just as messy!

At first, I tried flipping them too early.  They had not been stuck together enough.  And even after waiting awhile longer, they still crumbled a bit.  Oh-well.  I scooped them out of the oil the best I could and gave them a try.

This batch was better than the baked falafel patties, but that was only because frying seemed to cover up some of the flavor that the mix packed.  So while I call this a success in the attempt of falafel, it was a fail in finding a staple non-animal based protein food to add to my diet.

I will have to find a recipe to make my own falafel next time.  

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Questions
1.  Have you tried Falafel?  If so, do you have any alternative ideas for cooking methods?

2.  What new foods have you tried recently?



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