the falafel experience: are you experienced?

you know when people call in to radio shows, how sometimes they say, "hi this is johnny x., long time listener, first time caller..."? well that is how i've always felt about falafel. i've loved it for as long as i can remember, but have never tried my hand at actually making it. sure, there were a few hapless stints with dry mix from the box, but they paled so in comparison to the cheap and delicious wares from saad's or mama's, that i'd always just say "ahh, forget it, i'd rather spend 3 bucks on the real thing." sigh...how often i have bowed to the false god of convenience.

but today, with warm spring sunlight flooding the kitchen, ryan and i made falafel from scratch, and it was an experience worth repeating. there are a number of steps, but it's as easy as chopping some vegetables and using your food processor, i mean it.

the falafel experience: cobbled together from vegan with a vengeance (p. 98) and an old minimalist recipe from mark bittman

- in your handy dandy food processor, pulse 2 cups chickpeas (you can use canned ones, or dried ones that were soaked overnight - i used a little of both) with a tablespoon of bread crumbs and another table spoon or two of flour. you want to achieve a crumbly texture but NOT a puree. never a puree with falafel.

- then throw in a chopped onion, a few minced cloves of garlic, and a massive handful of italian parsley (the kind with the broad, flat leaves). also at this point, also add one teaspoon sea salt, a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and heavy pinches of ground coriander and cumin. you can certainly use pre-ground spices but i highly recommend toasting and grinding your own.

++ how to ++ take some cumin and coriander seeds and throw them in a dry pan over a high flame. keep your pretty eye on them so they don't burn. toss the pan around occasionally, and toast them until they are fragrant. if shit starts popping, immediately turn the flame off! let the seeeds cool for a moment, then, pulverize into oblivian with a mortar & pestle. this mix is gonna smell incredibly good so close your eyes, breathe deeply, and pretend you're in a spice market somewhere exotic, like bangkok or bombay.

- okay, back to the contents of your food processor. pulse everything (chickpea mixture, onions & garlic, spices, salt and parsley) until it is well combined, but again, NOT pureed.



- with a spatula, scrape your falafel mix out and transfer to a ceramic bowl. refrigerate for at least 20 minutes. this helps the mix stay together once you attempt to drown it in hot oil.

- you can use a deep fryer here, but man those things are a pain in the ass. instead, i suggest filling a small-ish non-stick pan 1/2 way up with vegetable oil. get it hot. bittman suggests 350 degrees F. if you don't have a thermometer (or just don't bother with all that), let the oil get pretty damn hot, then toss a piece of batter in it. if it sinks to the bottom, bubbles gather around it, and it quickly rises back to the surface, it's ready!!

- with your hands, shape the falafel mix into balls - whatever sized balls you prefer (no snickering!!). throw them into the oil, and don't touch them for 5 minutes. after that time elapses, flip each one over carefully with tongs. you will almost faint with delight when you see the transformation:

- you will probably have to do it in two batches. drain the done falafel balls on a paper towel and then assemble a crazy sandwich in a pita. to ours, we added tahini sauce (basically, tahini + water + lemon juice), homemade hummus, fresh spinach, carrots, tomatoes, sprouts, and hot sauce. oh my god! falafel is literally the perfect vegan food: a complete protein AND deep fried. suck it, crappy falafel mix from the box!


love,
emily

stick team

a note to begin: do not be mislead by the charming icon on the left, the expectant chef tasting a delicate consommé or reduction or whatever. what transpired today was an experiment of an entirely low brow nature, an experiment involving vegetarian hot dogs, thick beer spiked batter and a deep fryer from the 70's. what happened today was corndogs.

for me, major televised sporting events are an excuse to drink beer in the afternoon and eat funny food. when my hometown team wins, that's a great bonus! people will be nicer to one another on the street the next day and i'll have something to chit chat about with the regulars at work. sadly, today i drank no beer (i'm fighting an oncoming cold) and the home team lost, but funny food was still in full effect.

i've never made corndogs and i've never used the deep fryer my mom gave me (out of her basement, i think?) a few summers ago. that's why this whole endeavor counts as a culinary experiment, even though cheffy up there in the corner would surely scoff (or, as the french say, escoffier) at such a notion. but the way i see it, every food - trashy or high falutin - has its day. and football is a lot like a hot dog: a symbol of the good parts of americana (simplicity, non-pretension, commitment to pleasure) and the bad parts, too (commodification of pleasure, convenience over health, machismo). but i digress: the point, friends is that ryan and i made vegan corndogs today and, dammit, they were good.

first, the batter: equal parts flour (we used whole wheat which kind of made us feel better about the negative nutritional value of these suckers) and corn meal, generous pinches of salt, sugar and cayenne, and big splashes of soy milk (plain vitasoy) and beer (schmidt's). we made the batter pretty thin - after all, the goal is a nice, crispy coating, not a sheath of corn bread. we cut two packs of veegs doggies in halves, so there would be more to go around at the sports watching get together. sharing is key, dudes. the halves were rolled in some cornstarch:


then, we fired up the deep fryer. because of his restaurant experiences, ryan was way more comfortable with the fryer than me, so i let him take over that very integral part of the process. we first used a vegetable oil and olive oil blend (b/c we were low on veg oil), but it wasn't really getting hot enough so i ran out to the market to buy more veg oil. it takes a disgusting amount of oil to deep fry - try not to think about it. so with 100% vegetable oil, we really got that baby going.

in the above photo, there are too many doggies in the stew. we quickly learned that the dogs like to stick to each other and must be limited to three at a time. it's time consuming but worth it when they started to come out perfectly. we made a big batch of the corndogs, a hand full of onion rings and one lone jalapeno popper, and took it all over to the football friend get-down. and they were a hit! who doesn't love a battered hot dog, i mean really. shown below with some ketchup spiked with sriracha for dipping, wake up to your golden nugget junk food dreams.

love,
emily

p.s. another special thanks to ryan (master! snack master!) for really captaining this entire process.