Felafel and a couple of mini recipes

So now that felafel has been established on this blog as in fact an Arabic food, given that the Arab world stretches over 22 countries and many other countries with large Arab populations, it should be apparent that it varies by each country in spices, toppings, shapes and sizes. The different ingredients used to provide flavor can reflect the economy, culture and agriculture of a nation. In some areas, it is flavored with lots of herbs meanwhile in others, the flavor depends mainly on spices. In Bahrain, I have had a few variants of felafel, at a cafe near my house called lilac, the kitchen was staffed completely by a Tunisian family, their felafel was made with a large amount of parsley and cooked garlic, reflecting the French influence in Tunisian culture. Bahraini felafel is flavored almost primarily with cumin, not really my taste, this is due to the fact that Bahrain's whether cannot support the cultivation of herbs like parsley or cilantro (referred to as coriander leaves there).Lebanese felafel “the original” felafel consists of both fresh herbs and spices and tend to have a very green tint to them, this could very well reflect the Greek influence on their cuisine because generally, Lebanese cuisine contains much more herbs than the other nations in their region. My favorite felafel I have had was at a small Palestinian coffee shop, once again really close to my house called Haboota, there was such complexity in flavor, given by a mix of, if I remember correctly, 7 spices, and most uniquely, cardamom. Cardamom acts as a flavor enhancer, as a brighter spice, it contrasts with the heavy flavors of cumin and coriander and cuts through the sometimes cloying flavors of those two spices, which in fact, the addition of fresh herbs would do this as well. Palestinian cuisine tends to be very different from other traditional Arabic cuisine, mainly because of since the formation of Israel in 1948, it has experienced a large amount of isolation and economic depression, so their cuisine has developed and evolved differently from most other cuisines, out of resourcefulness rather than adoption of other cultures. So one can conclude that Palestine has had very little influence from herb using nations and the usage of herbs for flavor enhancers costs much more than spices. Therefore, somewhere along the line, cardamom was added to do the same job as cilantro and it stuck. So in this aspect, I would like to say that my felafel recipe has been adapted to resemble Palestinian felafel, but I cannot say it truly matches that of Haboota.

Felafel is usually paired with a very abrasive sauce of lemon, tahina and garlic and also is found served with hummus. I just have troubles eating and serving something made entirely out of chickpeas with a chickpea based dip, therefore, along with a basic tahina sauce recipe, I will also provide a recipe for mutabal, a dip consisting of roasted eggplant, tahina (sesame seed paste) and yogurt, they will not be as in depth as the felafel itself, but there will be a very in depth recipe coming soon purely on mutabal and Arabic bread. If you want to pair it with hummus, I would recommend the recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi, though I will probably post a recipe for hummus eventually.
Ingredients:

1 cup of dried chickpeas

1 tablespoon of ground coriander

2 teaspoons of ground cumin

2 teaspoons of ground cardamom

2 teaspoons of salt

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

½ small onion, ¼ inch dice

3 cloves of garlic peeled and minced

Oil for frying

Pita or prepared flat bread for serving (I used frozen naan)

Mutabal
1 Large eggplant, pricked with a fork
Juice of 1 lemon
2 Tablespoons of tahina
2 Tablespoons of plain yogurt
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced

Tahina Sauce
1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice
6 tablespoons of tahina
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons of cold water
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Large pinch of salt

Start off the night before by covering the chickpeas by a few inches of water and allow to soak overnight. I have seen a few recipes out there using canned pre cooked chickpeas, this is so wrong, what you will end up with is supper dense felafel with no texture if they don't fall apart. Is it really that much harder to put chickpeas in a bowl of water? It took me 30 seconds tops

Grind the chickpeas to a coarse texture, as seen below. This could be done in a food processor (what i did) or meat grinder, but not too many people own a meat grinder.

Add in the coriander, cumin, cardamom, salt, olive oil, onion and garlic, mix to combine, the bowl of my mini food processor proved to be too difficult to mix without everything falling out. Let sit for at least an hour, this does two things, allow the flavors to fully permeate the mixture and draws out moisture from the chickpeas which allows they to form a lot easier.

Some recipes will say to grind the onions and garlic with the chickpeas, but I personally like it when the onions are still in noticeable chunks, this way, i like the contrast in texture and sweetness it provides, feel free to grind the onions though.

Shape the felafel into either patties, balls or a quenelle shape as below. Some people say to do this gently, but when trying to be gentle, they will fall apart when frying, so, try to compact them. My mixture yielded about 14 pieces.

Fry at 375 degrees until golden brown. about 5 minuets. Ideally, this would be done in a large pot, however, but I did it in a smaller saucepan, so I had to do them about 4 at a time, if the oil is overcrowded, the oil temperature will change dramatically, which would be bad. The lens of my camera kinda got fogged up when taking this picture, so kinda a bad quality picture :/

Remove from the oil and set to dry on a paper towel lined plate, sprinkle with some more salt while still hot.

Mutabal

1. Roast the eggplant at 500 degrees for about 30 minuets, it should resemble a really big raisin. Let cool and peel.

2. Place in a food processor and pulse until pretty smooth and add in the rest of the ingredients, pulse for about a minuets to fully allow the mixture to emulsify.

Tahina Sauce

1. Mix together the tahina and lemon juice, if you notice, after a couple seconds of mixing, the mixture will get a lot thicker.
2. While whisking continuously, drizzle in the cold water, then the olive oil. Season with a pinch of salt.

Serve all of this with some flat bread of choice. As a street food felafel is often served within a pita as a sandwich along with tahina, various vegetables and sometimes french fries. In addition to attempting to improve my recipe writing skills, I also intend to improve my presentation skills to a more fine dining level, so yeah some of my final food pictures will look kinda odd like this one.

*Last note, if anyone out there has as much interest in the political effects on Palestinian cuisine, I would recommend the book "Gaza Kitchen" by Laila El Haddad