I love falafel
I don't remember exactly why we tried it back in Budapest but probably because the little hidden restaurant looked so cute that we decided to sit there and see what they had on the menu. This was a lot of unknown stuff to us as I think I recall it being a vegan restaurant. I ordered falafel for all of us and just some fries for the little one as she never wanted to try new things anyway.
Weirdly enough, she tried the falafel even though it was green (the horror!) and it's been one of these things that I tried to order in when I could so that she would eat something more healthy. It was not until here in Spain that I did my first trial of making these falafel balls myself as I didn't have the kitchen machine to blend the ingredients.
The second DIY attempt
The first time I tried making them myself didn't go as smooth as I hoped, I ended up flattening the balls so I could bake them in the pan but my daughter went wild for them. Sadly it was so much hassle to make them and I decided to wait a bit until I did another attempt. This time I decided I'd not use the whole pack and just a quarter so there was enough for the both of us (my boyfriend doesn't like them) and maybe a few leftover if we're lucky. Less cutting and less mixing, so this should be a good attempt.
Herbs
Where I bought the herbs days before I was going to make the falafel, I sadly found out that the cilantro was not fresh anymore so I filled that up with more parsley, which was still fresh, luckily. I think this is a recipe you can totally tweak to your own liking anyway and I just used the ingredients listed on the recipes as a guidance, they are not alike any of them and mostly based on what fit the machine and what was good to use still.
Will they be ok?
For a little bit I was afraid the dough was too wet and that they'd end up shit, thankfully I was smart enough to not prep them in a frying pan this time but use a little pan on the stove with special frying oil in it. This was the best decision and saved me tons of hassle and time!
Look at these, they look delicious don't they?
Adding some veggies to the plate put them together in a pita bread and voila:
Leftover peas
When I noticed I had too many soaked chick peas to process to become falafel because the herbs weren't fresh anymore, I decided to roast them in the oven. Super simple: just put a sheet of baking paper on the plate, add the soaked peas, cover with olive oil and some herbs (I used different dried herbs) and put them in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes.
And there is your healthy snack! I prefer eating some still warm, so lovely! My daughter also approved of these, my boyfriend hates them as they're a bit dry, lol. Definitely need to have some water on the side when eating them.
I'm starting to appreciate chick peas more and more.. Do you like them? Any recipes you want to share?
Have a good weekend!
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