Falafel

My brother passed along this recipe for falafel. The recipe is copied from his e-mail (because I'm super lazy) with a few notes added.

1 15 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 cloves garlic
1/2 chopped onion (we used red onion)
1/2 cup parsley
2 t olive oil
2 t hot sauce
3 T flour
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
1/2 t paprika
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt, to taste

The recipe calls for baking these things. I ("I" meaning my brother, but we did this too. It's much too hot to be using the oven.) pan fry them on low heat until they're browned on both sides and heated through, you can try whichever. If you bake them, preheat to 400.

Pulse chickpeas and garlic in blender (If you have a food processor please use it! The chickpeas mush into a thick cement paste at the bottom of the blender. Ben added water to get things moving around in the blender, but that meant that our falafel was wetter and didn't form into very ball-like balls.)  Add onion, parsley, olive oil, and hot sauce, and blend until relatively smooth.

Transfer to mixing bowl. Mix in flour, cumin, coriander, paprika, baking powder, salt and pepper. The mixture should be mushy but firm enough to shape into balls. You can add some flour to firm up if necessary (we added at least twice as much flour because we had to add water while blending).

Pan fry in some oil. I've been using peanut because it's what we have. Presumably canola would work the same. Olive was a little less good the one time I used it. I do this on pretty low heat and they tend not to stick too much. I'll leave that to you. (We used canola oil.)

The recipe says this makes 12 falafels -- I obviously make them larger, because I only get about half that. Make them whatever size you find convenient. (We ended up with 8 falafel patties.)

If you bake, it says to form them into walnut size balls and flatten. Spray a baking sheet with some cooking spray and bake for 16-18 minutes, spray the top, flip, and bake for 8-10 more. 

These are so good (thanks, Brother!). Ben thought that he would like more hot sauce next time, but I thought the spices were perfect as they were; the cumin/hot sauce combo makes these slightly hot with a smokey flavor. We ate our falafel wrapped up in pita bread with cucumber, tomato, and ranch dressing. We used ranch because I had some vague idea that there was a white sauce that people used with falafel-- turned out to be a pretty good addition. I mentioned above that our falafel was wetter than typical, but in my opinion this was an improvement over other falafel I've had in the past; I think most restaurant falafel is too dry.