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

kitchen alchemy: trash into gold

i love making soup, be it a spoonful of red miso dissolved in hot water with a handful of spinach thrown in, or a complicated multi-step, multiple hour long recipe with a foot long ingredient list. soup is rad because you can eat tons of it and not get too full, and because it warms up your body and makes you feel safe. soup is rad because you can make a monster batch of it and eat it all week long, and unlike most leftovers, it actually gets better as it sits idly in your fridge. it's magic! no, actually it's science, and this is the dime store explanation: as soup gets older (not too old, mind you -if it smells funny, it might be time to toss it) the starches in it break down into sugars, so the flavor deepens and the texture gets richer.

dude, it's a huge cop out to use bouillon cubes or packaged vegetable broth when making soup. you can't really say a soup is made from scratch when the broth is a processed, sodium bloated dry cube. even using the fancy vegan kinds just always made me feel like sort of a faker. and please understand, i am not judging anyone who uses bouillon as a shortcut - in fact, and i'll admit it now to the world, that's all i have ever used. i don't feel particularly proud of that, but i can really be a sucker for convenience. no more! the time has come to evolve as a cook, and mainly inspired by my friend/co-worker/jam master janina, i recently embarked on the journey known as making your own broth.

there are a lot of cooking projects out there that seem really intimidating until you actually just do them. perhaps this struggle extends into life outside the kitchen as well...it is so easy to build things up in your mind until they are bigger than you, bigger than your will, until they mock you with cartoon monster laughter. and as i've so often realized (and yet, so often seem to forget), once you turn to face these things with some steely resolve, they aren't such a big deal after all. for instance, i used to wish desperately that i could make homemade seitan, assuming for some reason that i wouldn't be able to do it. and then one day, i just went for it, and it was super fun and easy and i never bought seitan from the store ever again. i used to proclaim that i "sucked" at baking, and hated how precise you had to be to make it work. then i started reading recipes more carefully and taking some chances, and started stocking the kitchen with higher quality baking ingredients. voila! muffins, scones, pies, cookies - now i make them all with little anxiety or self doubt.

so, vegetable stock was one of those intimidating things for me until janina broke it down: put a bunch of vegetable scraps in a pot with some water, spices and salt, and simmer the hell out of it. cool, strain, and that's it. that is it! for a week or two, every time you cook, save all the carrot and potato peels, onions and garlic paper, leek tops, squash guts and all the other veggie odds and ends that you normally trash or compost. i put mine in a big plastic container in the freezer, but you can use a plastic bag too. then, when you know you'll be home for a few hours, alchemize that shit into pure gold. i started my batch off with half an onion chopped sauteed for a few minutes with olive oil, mixed peppercorns, some bay leaves and a few pinches of dried rosemary. then i literally dumped my cache of veg scraps in (you have to use kind of a big pot), poured enough water in to cover the mess, and topped it off with some sea salt. i then brought it to a boil, turned it down to a simmer and let it do its thing for about 2.5 hours. what happens is the liquid vastly reduces, and the vegetables cook down into mush, imparting all their flavor crystals and vitamin power into the remaining water. i let it cool for awhile and then strained it into a container. i didn't mess with cheesecloth or any of that, just used a normal colander and that was that. now i have tons of vegetable stock (for the long term, i froze some in an ice cube tray), that will lend the delicious taste of victory to all the soups and sauces i'm going to make in the coming month. yes! yessssssss.

janina writes for a cool blog calls isgreaterthan, and back in november, did a super straightforward post about homemade vegetable stock. it really demystifies the process, and makes you feel like "yeah, i can do this." read it here! making stuff yourself instead of buying it from the store is maybe one of the greatest feelings there is, and kids, i'm riding high.


love,
emily