Day One: Falafel

Yesterday was the first day of my No-Cost Food Challenge. I served leftover pasta for lunch, and for dinner I opted for homemade falafel - for two reasons: my fresh coriander needed to be used or it would have ended in the garbage. Second, I had found what seemed a perfect recipe, from my newest cookbook called Jerusalem.

And the recipe really is perfect. I just had to re-read it a couple of times to make sure I’d understood it correctly: and yes, falafel are made out of soaked but uncooked chickpeas. This turned out to be a bit of a challenge as I don’t have a proper grinder to grind the chickpeas, so I had to manage with my Bamix hand blender. But it wasn’t impossible. And as a result I got the best falafel I’ve ever eaten: delicious and oh so crunchy! I changed the spices a bit to correspond to my taste. Feel free to add some cayenne pepper and cardamom as the original recipe suggests.

For about 30 falafel you need:

• 250g dried chickpeas, soaked 8-12 hours


• 1 smallish onion


• 1-2 garlic cloves


• a handful of chopped herbs - I used coriander and mint, parsley would work as well


• 1 tsp ground cumin


• ½ tsp ground coriander


• 1 tsp salt


• ½ tsp baking powder


• 1 ½ Tbsp plain flour


• 3 Tbsp water


• about 750 ml frying oil


• 2 Tbsp sesame seeds for coating

Drain chickpeas and combine them with chopped onion, crushed garlic, and chopped herbs. Now comes the tricky part: all of this should be turned into a paste, not too coarse, nor too mushy. It should be easier with a meat grinder, but I haven’t got one. So what I did was to take small amounts of chickpeas and pulse them with my hand mixer - the result wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Then it’s time to add spices - cumin, coriander, and salt, baking powder, flour, and water. Work the paste with your hands until everything is well combined.

Let the paste stand for at least one hour in the fridge before using it.

Heat the oil in a pan - the temperature should be about 180 C. I don’t have a kitchen thermometer either, so I use a trick I learned from my mother-in-law instead: I cut a raw potato wedge and test the temperature with it. If it starts kind of bubbling but not too much, the oil has the right temperature. (And if it starts browning immediately it’s too hot! This never happened to me, though, ‘cause I’m so so scared of burning the oil ;) )

Wet your hands and form small balls out of the batter. Coat them with some sesame seeds and fry 6-7 falafel at a time until they are golden brown - this takes about 4-6 minutes. Drain your falafel in a colander to get the extra oil out.

To avoid food waste, fry only the amount of falafel you’re going to serve at one meal. Falafel doesn’t taste that good the day after. The rest of the batter can be used next day, or even frozen and used within a month or so.

I served my falafel with cooked rice, potato mash for the kids, hummus, and avocado-cucumber-mint salad.