Falafel Factory

Last Saturday morning Jerod and I got to talking about our plans for the day and came to the conclusion we would have a stay-at-home date that night (i.e. cooking and a movie). It was a cold, gloomy day perfect for being in the the kitchen so I decided to tackle one of my cooking fears and make falafel! Jerod and I both LOVE falafel sandwiches but I have only attempted to make it once, about 6 years ago, with little success. This time was not without problem but better, I think I have figured out the issues and will be able to perfect it in the future.

. . . And if one is having falafel one needs pita too so not only did I have a falafel factory I had a pita factory (thanks to the Hobgood Five for titling these kitchen endeavors) we now have pita in the freezer for at least a month, no more boring sandwiches on regular bread for us. Below are some details about the falafel process:

There really aren't too many ingredients in the falafel-Chickpeas, onion, garlic, parsley, lemon juice, and a few spices.

oh, I merged recipes from here and here to create the falafel recipe.

Food processing . . .

. . .more food processing.

Shaped into balls and ready for cooking.

The oil heating up. I do not often deep fry things and was quite nervous about this step. As it turns out I had every reason to be, but we'll get to that.

As you can see I am no longer deep frying and have transferred everything to a skillet, at least it's a little healthier for us now. Here is what happened: I put the first 5 falafel in the oil to fry and they completely disintegrated, as in were gone, no longer existed! After a little cussing I figured out that my mixture was too wet, mixed a bit of flour in and cooked them in the skillet. Everything went much more smoothly after that.

Here is our little feast ready to be turned into sandwiches. To complete the sandwiches we have hummus, cucumber, tomato, and yogurt sauce (recipes for hummus and yogurt sauce are from here and here).

The pita looking puffy and happy! (I used the recipe from here, which is where I cook most of my bread from)

Oven baked fries looking crispy and delicious! (this recipe I just kind of make up: potates, oil, salt, pepper...bake at 425 degrees until crispy, flip once)

Dinner in all of it's tasty goodness. We had the perfect night and watched one of the best movies Jerod and I had seen in a long time, Drive. If you haven't watched it you should, unless you are my Mom then DO NOT!!!!!! This movie is not for you. We followed this up with some chocolate and peanut butter chip, oatmeal cookies which I didn't get a picture of but were great all the same. I really love weekends. I hope all of you did something fun too.