News from the kitchen

For those of you who read my blog during my year in Vancouver, you may recall that I would regularly post reviews of various meals I had enjoyed cooking. I realised that I have not been doing that lately so I thought I would take this opportunity to tell y'all about my recent experimentation with the middle eastern favourite falafel. Sorry I don't have a camera any more so there are not photos to accompany this review, you will have to use your imagination.

Falafel are little fried balls made mainly of chickpeas (or Garbanzo beans whatever you want to call them). As the selection of meat here is not all that great I have been finding vegetarian dishes to be more and more of an appealing option lately, especially dishes using chickpeas. I first tried my hand at making falafel a few months ago, the first attempt was not bad, definitely a recipe I considered worth trying again and experimenting a little with. The second time I forgot a vital ingredient, flour is essential to help the falafel hold together, after trying to shallow fry a couple of them I found that my oil was extremely dirty and my falafel were very small. So I added the flour and reshaped all my falafel then tried again, still using the dirty oil. They were
not all that good and it kind of put me off attempting them for a couple of months. Then last week Chris and I were deciding what to have for dinner and I suggested trying falafel again. As good as falafel are, they really need something to go with them, some kind of sauce or dip or something, so I decided to try another chickpea staple, hummous. Wow, what a great meal that was, who would have though the humble chickpea could so easily be made in to 2 wonderful dishes. The unfortunate side effect was the strong taste of garlic left in my mouth for the rest of the evening, but that is a small price to pay. I was so impressed by the falafel and hummous that I thought I should share the experience with others, and as Deb has frequently had Chris and I over for dinner I thought I would repay the favour. So on Wednesday I invited Deb over to share in the falafel experience. This time I decided to try a slightly different recipe, as I had not been entirely happy with the texture of the previous attempts. This recipe involved rolling the falafel in sesame seeds before frying. It was a great idea, the sesame seeds added a little crunch and tasted just superb. As I had planned this meal a few days ahead I made sure I had other sauces available as well, well actually it was just more hummous and some unsweetened yoghurt, but it was certainly a great addition to the meal. Then to make the meal complete I baked some pita bread, and to my surprise they actually worked pretty well, good enough for us to stuff them with hummous, yoghurt and falafel without them falling apart.

So now after these last 2 falafel experiences I am right in falafel mode again, and each time I go to the store I can't resist buying another can or two of chickpeas, just in case. I have my eye on a rather yummy looking eggplant dip that I spotted in a magazine the other week, so maybe I will have to try that with my next falafel adventure.