Favabulous Falafel
Apparently this is an Egyptian style falafel using fava beans instead of chickpeas, can’t say myself as haven’t been there but pyramids aside it’s tasty as and well worth the effort. And has the added advantage of not leaving you with cotton mouth like nearly every dirty takeaway falafel seems to these days.
Ingredients
- 500g of soaked and peeled fava beans. Alternatively you can use canned and can even switch to chick peas for more traditional version or a mix of both if you feeling freaky
- 5 tablespoons fresh or dried herbs up to you here, it’s your falafel flavour it how you fancy I went with parsley and coriander
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1/3 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon bicarb soda
- Salt to taste
- Add any other spices you want here e.g chilli or curry or anything you want to make different flavoured versions
Method
- Throw everything into a food processor and mix till all chopped up nice and small like bread crumbs
- Heat oil in a deep pan or saucepan, if you want to proper deep fry go ahead for the version in picture I just fried in a couple of centimetres if oil and turned over. I’m yet to try baking these but will update when I have sampled the results
- Check the heat of oil with a little bit of bread, if it sizzles and bubbles and cooks then your good to go. Key here is to have the oil heated but don’t have it full on. E.g. on my stove it was only on 2 (7 being highest setting on my hob)
- In hand make golf ball size balls and put in the oil frying till golden brown and crispy turning as needed
- Pull out of oil and sit on kitchen towel to soak up some oil then your good to go, I served with a bunch of sauté veggies in fresh thyme, hummus and baked balsamic tomatoes. But you can serve with salad or rice or anything you like. Either way I’d defo go for the hummus as it’s lovely