I'll give the falafel recipe first, but for prepping up everything, it'd be best to do the sauce first on the day you're serving, because it needs time to chill and develop its flavor.
For the falafel:
- 2 cups of dried garbanzos (chickpeas)
- 1/2 red onion, chopped
- 6 cloves of garlic
- 1/2 cup of fresh Italian parsley
- 2 eggs
- 4 tsp of ground cumin
- 2 tsp of dried coriander seeds, crushed
- 1 tsp of salt
- 1/2 tsp of black pepper
- 1/2 tsp of cayenne
- 1/2 tsp of fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp of baking powder
- 4 Tbsp of olive oil
- 1.5 cups of bread crumbs
To start with, you'll want to soak your garbanzos (I love the word "garbanzos". Like Carlin has said, it sounds like a circus act: "The Flying Garbanzos!!!"). It's usually recommended to soak them in cold water overnight, I went for a straight eight hours. They start out like hard little pebbles, and after those eight hours turn semi-soft but firm. Some recipes recommend using canned garbanzos, but I feel like they end up too mushy.
After they've soaked, mash them up with a fork or potato masher. In my opinion, the best texture is achieved by crushing about two-thirds of them into small pieces, and leaving about a third broken into large pieces. Next, run your red onion, parsley, and garlic through the blender and mix into the beans to chop them up fine and mix their flavor, then stir it into the beans. Finally, take the egg, cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, cayenne, lemon juice, olive oil and baking powder, and scramble them all together. Pour into the bean mixture, and work all the flavors together with fork thoroughly.
Now, take your bread crumbs, and stir it in to the mix. The goal here is to get a blend that isn't goopy and sticky, but still has enough moisture to allow you to form balls of the mix. If you add too much, the whole thing will crumble in your hand, so I recommend starting with a cup, and slowly adding until you get the right texture. You'll want them to be just large enough to fit in about a third of your hand. Some people recommend flattening them in order to cook them all the way through, but I believe they're missing the point in doing so.
The cucumber-dill sauce is fairly simple:
- 6oz container of plain yogurt
- 1/2 of a cucumber, skinned and diced
- 3 Tbsp of fresh dill
- 1 Tbsp of mayonaisse
- salt and pepper to taste
Stir all of the ingredients together and let rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
For plating the sandwiches, I used some honey-wheat pita pockets, romaine lettuce, sliced tomato, and sliced the remainder of the cucumber and onion from the two recipes, served alongside some bing cherries. It's a bit of work, but your end result is a flavorful meal with lots of fresh veg. The measurements above gave enough mix for 20 falafel balls, only half of which we ate that night. Any falafel you don't finish off can be stored in a tupperware container with some paper towel (to absorb any excess moisture and oil), then reheated in a toaster oven to restore the crispness.