Falafel Fiasco

June’s Supper Club theme was Greek food. I made Falafel and it was pretty much a comedy of errors.

To be perfectly honest, the recipe itself is actually pretty easy. I picked this one for exactly that reason. I got the recipe from Joy of Cooking. Yup, the Joy of Cooking has falafel and a surprising number of other Middle-eastern recipes, as well as a good number of ethnic cuisines. Now, I actually have a Lebanese cookbook (my mom is half Lebanese) that includes another fairly easy falafel recipe, but it’s in Spanish, and quite frankly, I didn’t feel like translating. Earlier in the day, I tackled a trapeze class along with some of the other Supper Clubbers. As I’m afraid of heights, that left me completely mentally exhausted, a little drained, and pressed for time. That good ‘ol standby, TJOC was there to help.

Their recipe is as follows:

1 ¼ c dried chickpeas, soaked and drained
(I used the soaking method of pouring enough boiling water over the chickpeas to cover by 2 inches. I allowed the chickpeas to stand for over an hour to let the water soak in and for the chickpeas to swell. I then drained them well.)

½ c chopped onions
¼ cup packed fresh parsley leaves
2 glove garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons ground cumin
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon coriander seeds, rushed, or ½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon ground red pepper

Process until the mixture is coarsely pureed. Remove to bowl and stir in:
2 tablespoons all purpose flour

With wet hands, form chickpea mixture into 4 patties, each about 3 inches in diameter. Let stand for 15 minutes. Pour ½ inch of oil into a deep skillet and fry chickpea patties until golden brown on both sides, about 4 minutes on each side. Drain on paper towels. They claim this makes 4 servings.

Since we were going to be a group of 10, I doubled the recipe. This wasn’t much harder, it just required running the ingredients through the processor in batches. What I soon realized, however, is that if that 1 recipe was supposed to make 4 servings, they would be 4 very large servings. The resulting falafel would have been behemoths. I prefer smaller, more manageable patties and I’d say I got a little over two dozen from the doubled recipe.

As you can see, it’s a pretty easy recipe. Basically, all that is involved in this recipe is throwing all of the ingredients into a food processor. From there, you just form the dough into patties and fry. That’s about it. However, as you probably know by now, I’m pretty liberal when it comes to spicing and usually it serves me well. This time, however, it got me into trouble.

After, draining the chickpeas and running them through the food processor with the other ingredients, I began adding salt and spices. Somehow I over salted. I may have sprinkled too much in. As well, amongst the seasonings I used, I grabbed the beloved Cavender's Greek Seasoning and sprinkled some in. Of course, there is salt in the mix and this probably contributed to sending it over the edge. To offset the salt, I figured I’d add more chickpeas and a little of everything else. I had some from the dried batch that had been soaked and drained leftover. I added those but they weren’t enough to balance the flavors. I didn’t have time to soak more, so I added a can I had on hand. I didn’t read the ingredients list --- salt is definitely in there. * Sigh * From now on I will be more vigilant of salt and other additives. Lesson learned.

Even so, while the dough was still salty, it was definitely better. To make sure I wouldn’t be serving my friends saltlicks disguised as falafel balls, I decided to fry up some test subjects in my mini deep fryer. The basket for this deep fryer hinges on a pivot, but can be locked into place. I failed to this before heating up the oil and at some point between juggling forming patties and switching batches, I knocked the handle of the deep fryer basket into the boiling oil. The handle is covered in plastic.


In a moment of panic, I grabbed the nearest knife and thrust it into the oil to help fish out the handle. GAH!!!! NO!!! BAD MOVE! The knife just happened to be one of my very expensive Henkles. It came out covered in oozing plastic. Not only have I potentially ruined the deep fryer, now I’ve possibly killed one of my best knives as well!

Luckily, I was able to quickly scrape off the nasty, black plastic with a pot scraper. I also managed to rescue the deep fryer. The melted plastic that was still in the oil turned out to be pretty easy to scoop out and I was able to remove most of the remaining ooze from the handle as well. At that point I decided I’d done enough deep-frying for that afternoon.

The good news is that prior to meltdown, I managed get in a couple of batches of mini-falafel that G deemed to be slightly salty, but edible. The cooking process had ameliorated some of saltiness. Good enough.

I took the rest of the dough to Supper Club, along with my Dutch oven and a bottle of cooking oil to fry up the rest of the falafel there. These things taste better fresh anyways. I heated up the oil in the Dutch oven until bubbling and plopped in the patties. They came out ok. It turns out that there was a marked difference in the texture when fried in the Dutch oven vs. the deep fryer. It could be that I had not allowed the oil to heat enough, or perhaps it was the oils I used – canola in the Dutch oven and peanut at home – but whatever the reason, the texture was definitely far superior in the deep fryer. Still they were fine and we served them with hummus I had made and pita bread. However, melting handles aside, if you have a deep fryer, I recommend you use it.

Given all the stumbling blocks with the first attempt, I was very anxious to give these guys another try. The following Friday, our friends Max and Nicole came to stay with us for the weekend. I made the falafel again with G’s help this time. We served them with platters of pita, hummus, feta, tomatoes, and cucumber slices, so that everyone could build their own sandwich. This time everything went smoothly. This time there was no over-salting and no meltdowns. We fried them in the deep fryer and they came out delicious and crispy.

On the other hand, I slightly burned the pita bread . . . um, well, nobody’s perfect . . .