Felafel -- a comfort food
Back in the early 1970s (!) i got a job as a 'set carpenter' on the sets on which they film television shows. It was at the CBC in Vancouver and they had just moved into a very hi-tech fancy custom designed building with enormous studios in the basement. It was all concrete and glass and as a (very) young man, it impressed me. Working for the CBC did not, but that is another story....
This was my first time living on my own in the Big City and i loved the lifestyle it gave me. One of the things i soon discovered was a little Greek restaurant -- mostly take-away with only a couple of stools and a handful of tables -- called 'Souvlakis'. It was located right on English Bay at the major street junction by the beach. There i discovered the joy of Greek Food. Greek Salads, Souvlaki, Homous, Melitzano, Spanakopita!, creamy sweet Bougatsa wrapped in crisp filo dusted with sugar, but especially Felafel (which i realize isn't authentically Greek, but there you go, welcome to the New World...). Served in a pita with a salad and creamy tahini sauce, it became my favourite food of the time. The place was easy to get to from work and i made many stops there on my way home.
Later, as a full blown vegetarian (as opposed to a mostly-veggie) i rediscovered felafel in the form of instant felafel powder. This was, perhaps, 1974. And it was such a thrill to discover i could make these myself. Whip up a salad and sauce, mix some hot water with the powder and fry the felafel balls. And Bob's yer Uncle (and he is my kid's uncle, too!)
That was a start. But then i discovered Eva Zane's book "Middle Eastern Cookery" (1974). And my culinary world was transformed! Sections from Israel, Persia, Turkey, all the way to Morocco not only gave recipes, but as she says in the title to her introduction, it was about "The Middle East and its Cuisines". The stories she tells and the rather strange and exotic line drawings gave me glimpses into the role food plays in different places and set me on the path to a livelong obsession with ethnic foods. And as you can see here, i still have it!
This was my first time living on my own in the Big City and i loved the lifestyle it gave me. One of the things i soon discovered was a little Greek restaurant -- mostly take-away with only a couple of stools and a handful of tables -- called 'Souvlakis'. It was located right on English Bay at the major street junction by the beach. There i discovered the joy of Greek Food. Greek Salads, Souvlaki, Homous, Melitzano, Spanakopita!, creamy sweet Bougatsa wrapped in crisp filo dusted with sugar, but especially Felafel (which i realize isn't authentically Greek, but there you go, welcome to the New World...). Served in a pita with a salad and creamy tahini sauce, it became my favourite food of the time. The place was easy to get to from work and i made many stops there on my way home.
Later, as a full blown vegetarian (as opposed to a mostly-veggie) i rediscovered felafel in the form of instant felafel powder. This was, perhaps, 1974. And it was such a thrill to discover i could make these myself. Whip up a salad and sauce, mix some hot water with the powder and fry the felafel balls. And Bob's yer Uncle (and he is my kid's uncle, too!)
That was a start. But then i discovered Eva Zane's book "Middle Eastern Cookery" (1974). And my culinary world was transformed! Sections from Israel, Persia, Turkey, all the way to Morocco not only gave recipes, but as she says in the title to her introduction, it was about "The Middle East and its Cuisines". The stories she tells and the rather strange and exotic line drawings gave me glimpses into the role food plays in different places and set me on the path to a livelong obsession with ethnic foods. And as you can see here, i still have it!
At around the same time, i discovered another cookbook that transformed my appreciation of food. It was "Diet for a Small Planet" by Frances Moore Lappe. Her thesis, way back then, was that overpopulation will soon mean that we will run out of room to grow enough food to keep everyone supplied with the necessities of life. And back in those days, we thought in terms of 2-3 billion, not 5 billion as we have now. As she pointed out, it takes approximately 100 kgs of vegetable protein to produce 1 kg of animal protein. Given the areal needs of extensive agriculture, particularly the production of cattle, there simply would not be enough room on the planet to feed everybody. So we would have to depend upon plant proteins for human nutrition.
The problem with that is that our bodies require 'complete proteins' containing 21 amino acids, to metabolize and use dietary proteins. And most plant sources contain only a proportion of them -usually 15 5o 18 amino acids. However -- if two plant protein sources are combined, then the full range of necessary amino acids are present in the dish and there is no difference between that complete protein and the ones found in meat. This has been part of my diet ever since.
If you are interested, you can find her book here on Amazon, and a wikipage about it here. You can see from the wikipage that thinking has moved on a little since then, but as you will see below, Lappe's revelations led to what is probably the most significant stream in my diet -- peasant foods.
Lappe pointed out that nearly all important dishes in peasant societies were primarily vegetarian, because without refrigeration and modern distribution technologies, the only meat in a diet would come sporadically from either hunting (difficult) or the occasional slaughter of kept beasts (expensive and rare). In between, people ate food that came from the soil. (Incidentally, i don't remember Lappe mentioning it, but it became apparent to me that this same distinction also had a gender element to it -- men hunted and women worked everyday to get food from the soil).
And, as it turns out, those dishes -- red beans and rice, corn tortillas and beans, and, relevant for this thread, pita, felafel and homous -- all had full complementary amino acids, making them nutritionally very important. Felafel. Yet one more reason to love them!
Since then i have had felafel from a cart on 5th Ave in New York City on a snowy November evening; had them with homous and salad on a plate in Istanbul; had all sorts of outrageous versions of them in California and Vancouver; seen them served up as little hard reconstituted balls fished out of over-warm gastro-pans; and discovered the joys of the difference between Israeli felafel, Egyptian felafel, Cypriot felafel, and my own home made ones.
Good felafels are crispy on the outside and soft inside, but still a bit nutty in their texture. Drenched in a savoury tahini sauce and mixed with a salad (a 'relish' as Zane calls it) of either Mediterranean veg or a pickel mix, and served up in a dripping split pita, they represent the ultimate comfort food to me. They never made my tummy upset (a harder job as i get older!) and there is something about the tastes and textures that reminds me of cozy family dinners, Top of the list for comfort foods.....
The problem with that is that our bodies require 'complete proteins' containing 21 amino acids, to metabolize and use dietary proteins. And most plant sources contain only a proportion of them -usually 15 5o 18 amino acids. However -- if two plant protein sources are combined, then the full range of necessary amino acids are present in the dish and there is no difference between that complete protein and the ones found in meat. This has been part of my diet ever since.
If you are interested, you can find her book here on Amazon, and a wikipage about it here. You can see from the wikipage that thinking has moved on a little since then, but as you will see below, Lappe's revelations led to what is probably the most significant stream in my diet -- peasant foods.
Lappe pointed out that nearly all important dishes in peasant societies were primarily vegetarian, because without refrigeration and modern distribution technologies, the only meat in a diet would come sporadically from either hunting (difficult) or the occasional slaughter of kept beasts (expensive and rare). In between, people ate food that came from the soil. (Incidentally, i don't remember Lappe mentioning it, but it became apparent to me that this same distinction also had a gender element to it -- men hunted and women worked everyday to get food from the soil).
And, as it turns out, those dishes -- red beans and rice, corn tortillas and beans, and, relevant for this thread, pita, felafel and homous -- all had full complementary amino acids, making them nutritionally very important. Felafel. Yet one more reason to love them!
Since then i have had felafel from a cart on 5th Ave in New York City on a snowy November evening; had them with homous and salad on a plate in Istanbul; had all sorts of outrageous versions of them in California and Vancouver; seen them served up as little hard reconstituted balls fished out of over-warm gastro-pans; and discovered the joys of the difference between Israeli felafel, Egyptian felafel, Cypriot felafel, and my own home made ones.
Good felafels are crispy on the outside and soft inside, but still a bit nutty in their texture. Drenched in a savoury tahini sauce and mixed with a salad (a 'relish' as Zane calls it) of either Mediterranean veg or a pickel mix, and served up in a dripping split pita, they represent the ultimate comfort food to me. They never made my tummy upset (a harder job as i get older!) and there is something about the tastes and textures that reminds me of cozy family dinners, Top of the list for comfort foods.....
Felafel Recipe (the whole dang thing!)
I never use the powders anymore. It is almost easier and quicker to use canned chick peas! And the result is superlative. Sometimes i cook the chick peas myself, but that requires planning ahead so they can soak overnight. If you do that, then the cooking doesn't take so long. Chick peas are a classic peasant staple food. Prolific plants, able to handle harsh climatic conditions. But they need a hell of a lot of cooking to get them palatable. The quality does vary between various canned products, so if you find a good one, make note of it.
Falafel is really simple. You need four things. Pita bread. Felafel balls, salad and sauce. Nothin to it!
So here goes, a section for each....
I never use the powders anymore. It is almost easier and quicker to use canned chick peas! And the result is superlative. Sometimes i cook the chick peas myself, but that requires planning ahead so they can soak overnight. If you do that, then the cooking doesn't take so long. Chick peas are a classic peasant staple food. Prolific plants, able to handle harsh climatic conditions. But they need a hell of a lot of cooking to get them palatable. The quality does vary between various canned products, so if you find a good one, make note of it.
Falafel is really simple. You need four things. Pita bread. Felafel balls, salad and sauce. Nothin to it!
So here goes, a section for each....
Pita Bread
Home made pita is much easier than you might think. Certainly no harder than making pizza dough. In fact, the recipe is quite similar. I use the following amounts:
1 Cup warm water
1 envelope dry yeast
2 1/2 Cups white flour
2 teaspn salt
1 tblsp olive oil
And that's it!
Put the warm water in a pre-warmed mixing bowl and add the yeast. Let it sit for five or ten minutes until it starts to work. (i use a Kenwood machine for all baking since my wrists went...) Add the rest of the ingredients and start mixing. I use a dough hook to mix, but at a higher speed (1-2) and then knead at the minimum speed. As soon as the dough comes together, start the slow knead and do it for five to eight minutes. When the dough is uniform in text, soft and smooth, it is ready.
Put the dough in a warm bowl, cover and let it rise for an hour or so until double in bulk. Punch it down and cut into eight (for small pita) or six (for larger ones). The dough seems happy in the fridge for a few days so i just roll out what i need for tonight and keep the rest in the fridge, cooking them each subsequent meal. Work the dough parcels between your hands until spherical and then roll out until they are about 1/4 inch or so thick. Let them rise in a warm place for half and hour if you have time.
To bake them, you want your oven really hot. I use my pizza stone (i think it is a bit more like the hot stone ovens you see in old bakeries). So i get it really well warmed up and pop the slightly risen pita on the stone two at a time. One to two minutes per side is all it takes if it is hot. What you want is for them to pop up and separate. The way this works is that you form one cooked side which is relatively sealed. Flipping to the other side causes the moisture in the dough to expand against that cooked skin, causing it to puff up. Sometimes i have to flip them again and press down with a spatula to help them puff up. But they usually do, if the oven is hot enough. Tis the same as with chapattis -- you need that heat to make them work.
And there you are, you now have pita breads! Cut them just like you would bought pitas and they are ready to fill.
Home made pita is much easier than you might think. Certainly no harder than making pizza dough. In fact, the recipe is quite similar. I use the following amounts:
1 Cup warm water
1 envelope dry yeast
2 1/2 Cups white flour
2 teaspn salt
1 tblsp olive oil
And that's it!
Put the warm water in a pre-warmed mixing bowl and add the yeast. Let it sit for five or ten minutes until it starts to work. (i use a Kenwood machine for all baking since my wrists went...) Add the rest of the ingredients and start mixing. I use a dough hook to mix, but at a higher speed (1-2) and then knead at the minimum speed. As soon as the dough comes together, start the slow knead and do it for five to eight minutes. When the dough is uniform in text, soft and smooth, it is ready.
Put the dough in a warm bowl, cover and let it rise for an hour or so until double in bulk. Punch it down and cut into eight (for small pita) or six (for larger ones). The dough seems happy in the fridge for a few days so i just roll out what i need for tonight and keep the rest in the fridge, cooking them each subsequent meal. Work the dough parcels between your hands until spherical and then roll out until they are about 1/4 inch or so thick. Let them rise in a warm place for half and hour if you have time.
To bake them, you want your oven really hot. I use my pizza stone (i think it is a bit more like the hot stone ovens you see in old bakeries). So i get it really well warmed up and pop the slightly risen pita on the stone two at a time. One to two minutes per side is all it takes if it is hot. What you want is for them to pop up and separate. The way this works is that you form one cooked side which is relatively sealed. Flipping to the other side causes the moisture in the dough to expand against that cooked skin, causing it to puff up. Sometimes i have to flip them again and press down with a spatula to help them puff up. But they usually do, if the oven is hot enough. Tis the same as with chapattis -- you need that heat to make them work.
And there you are, you now have pita breads! Cut them just like you would bought pitas and they are ready to fill.
Salad
There are two basic salad types served with felafel. One is like a Greek Salad -- fresh tomatoes, red or green pepper, cucumber, and onion. I like to cut them quite small so that they fit in the pita easily. And salt them. If i was to serve without pita, maybe i would cut them bigger. I like to use red onion because it is a bit sweeter and mellower than ordinary onion, and i prefer red peppers to green. Back in the day, i remember how red peppers were really hard to find, now they seem ubiquitous. At any rate, use what you suits your taste.
The other type of salad uses picked vegetables -- usually variants of the fresh salad. Especially common are picked light green peppers. They are only a little hot and quite vinegar-y. As an aside, last time in Istanbul i visited a small shop in the Asian side of the Bosphorus, called Ozcan. The tiny shop was filled floor-to-ceiling with jars of every sort of picked vegetable you could imagine. So colorful! I bought some unusual ones and took them home. And used them in felafel, among other things.
It is good to drain the salad before spooning it into the pita bread, as things will be moist enough as it is. Otherwise, that's your salad!
There are two basic salad types served with felafel. One is like a Greek Salad -- fresh tomatoes, red or green pepper, cucumber, and onion. I like to cut them quite small so that they fit in the pita easily. And salt them. If i was to serve without pita, maybe i would cut them bigger. I like to use red onion because it is a bit sweeter and mellower than ordinary onion, and i prefer red peppers to green. Back in the day, i remember how red peppers were really hard to find, now they seem ubiquitous. At any rate, use what you suits your taste.
The other type of salad uses picked vegetables -- usually variants of the fresh salad. Especially common are picked light green peppers. They are only a little hot and quite vinegar-y. As an aside, last time in Istanbul i visited a small shop in the Asian side of the Bosphorus, called Ozcan. The tiny shop was filled floor-to-ceiling with jars of every sort of picked vegetable you could imagine. So colorful! I bought some unusual ones and took them home. And used them in felafel, among other things.
It is good to drain the salad before spooning it into the pita bread, as things will be moist enough as it is. Otherwise, that's your salad!
Sauce
The heart of the sauce is tahini -- and the better the tahini you use, the better the sauce tastes. It is dead easy to make.
2 tblsp tahini (be sure to mix the oil and paste first, if they separate in the jar)
2 tblsp fresh lemon juice
1 teasp tamari or other soy sauce
4 tblsp greek or turkish yoghurt.
The idea (from Zane) is to mix equal volumes of tahini and lemon juice. So start with them. What will happen at first is that they don't mix very well and you need to whip them a bit. But all of a sudden, as the last clumps of hard tahini paste dissolve, the whole thing emulsifies. In fact, it goes incredibly thick! This can take you aback a bit.
Not to worry, however. I add a splash of soy sauce (Kikkoman, natch) to add saltiness and a bit of a different dark note to the flavour. Mix that in, you will hardly see it is there. And then add an equal volume of yoghurt to what is already in the bowl and mix. The yoghurt thins the mixture a bit, taking it to just the right consistency. If it is, however, still too thick, you can always add a spoonful of water to loosen it.
Now you have your sauce.
The heart of the sauce is tahini -- and the better the tahini you use, the better the sauce tastes. It is dead easy to make.
2 tblsp tahini (be sure to mix the oil and paste first, if they separate in the jar)
2 tblsp fresh lemon juice
1 teasp tamari or other soy sauce
4 tblsp greek or turkish yoghurt.
The idea (from Zane) is to mix equal volumes of tahini and lemon juice. So start with them. What will happen at first is that they don't mix very well and you need to whip them a bit. But all of a sudden, as the last clumps of hard tahini paste dissolve, the whole thing emulsifies. In fact, it goes incredibly thick! This can take you aback a bit.
Not to worry, however. I add a splash of soy sauce (Kikkoman, natch) to add saltiness and a bit of a different dark note to the flavour. Mix that in, you will hardly see it is there. And then add an equal volume of yoghurt to what is already in the bowl and mix. The yoghurt thins the mixture a bit, taking it to just the right consistency. If it is, however, still too thick, you can always add a spoonful of water to loosen it.
Now you have your sauce.
The Felafel itself
Now for the last part.
I use:
1 can pre cooked chick peas (approx 225 grams)
2 tblsp bread crumbs or panko
1 egg, beaten
green onion, chopped finely
parsley, chopped finely
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
chopped parsley, mint, or cilantro to taste (say perhaps a whole tblspn in all)
This makes eight felafel balls.
The recipe can be easily multiplied to make larger amounts without a problem,.
As you see in the pictures, i do not use a machine to mix them together. What i use is a Scottish tattie basher. Machines make the mix too fine, too quickly to control. I like it to have a little texture and the best way is to mash them manually. Once all the ingredients are mixed together, take the masher to them until you get a fairly fine texture (given the above). See the picture for an idea of the texture....
Then tis just a matter of rolling them into small balls (do you use one entire or break on in half when you put it in the pita? I do the latter) and sticking them in the fridge for half an hour to consolidate. Take them out of the fridge and fry on a medium heat in 1/4 inch of oil until crispy, turning after the first time starts to brown. Drain on paper towel and your felafels are ready!
Now for the last part.
I use:
1 can pre cooked chick peas (approx 225 grams)
2 tblsp bread crumbs or panko
1 egg, beaten
green onion, chopped finely
parsley, chopped finely
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
chopped parsley, mint, or cilantro to taste (say perhaps a whole tblspn in all)
This makes eight felafel balls.
The recipe can be easily multiplied to make larger amounts without a problem,.
As you see in the pictures, i do not use a machine to mix them together. What i use is a Scottish tattie basher. Machines make the mix too fine, too quickly to control. I like it to have a little texture and the best way is to mash them manually. Once all the ingredients are mixed together, take the masher to them until you get a fairly fine texture (given the above). See the picture for an idea of the texture....
Then tis just a matter of rolling them into small balls (do you use one entire or break on in half when you put it in the pita? I do the latter) and sticking them in the fridge for half an hour to consolidate. Take them out of the fridge and fry on a medium heat in 1/4 inch of oil until crispy, turning after the first time starts to brown. Drain on paper towel and your felafels are ready!
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Assembly
Now all you have to do is assemble your felafels.
Slice your pita along one long axis. Gently pry them open. Then alternate spoonfuls of salad, felafel and sauce.
Get lots of paper towels handy, and enjoy!
Now all you have to do is assemble your felafels.
Slice your pita along one long axis. Gently pry them open. Then alternate spoonfuls of salad, felafel and sauce.
Get lots of paper towels handy, and enjoy!
