Your Favourite Falafels

It’s Friday the 13th, but I’m not that superstitious so I have already decided that today will be a fabulous day.

These falafels might help make it a little bit more fabulous…it is after all, Day 8 of my 12-day cleanse, so I’m 2/3 of the way through and these delicious falafel babies are going to get me through the home stretch!

If you had a favourite falafel recipe already, I warn you that this one might overtake it! Vegan, gluten-free, cleanse-friendly…huh?

I tweaked the recipe for falafels provided in the Wild Rose Cookbook, meaning that yes, this recipe is cleanse-friendly!

Falafels are one of my favourite vegetarian foods (if you’ve never heard of them, Wikipedia has you covered) but, on occasion, I’ve eaten falafels that were dry and, because I typically would stuff them inside a pita that was just too much dryness. I always added some veggies and tzatziki, but still it didn’t improve things too much.

These falafels are almost like baked hummus balls. They’re really dense inside and moist so they taste like hummus wrapped up into a ball and baked (well, traditionally falafels are fried but these get that crispy exterior without all that oil!).

The original recipe from the Wild Rose Cookbook was really wet; I oculdn’t even shape the mixture into balls because it was just like a big bowl of hummus. So I tweaked it a bit and added some almond flour and bingo – yummy falafel!

My favourite way to eat them on this cleanse has been with a side of the lemon-tahini salad dressing I posted yesterday. If you leave the dressing in the fridge overnight, it thickens up really nicely and makes a perfect dip!

So to summarize, falafels are awesome why? Because you can:

• eat them on their own when you need a quick snack (the chickpeas make them nice and high in protein)
• serve them at parties with the dressing as a dip – perfect healthy, vegan, gluten-free party food that everyone can eat!
• break them up and eat them on top of a salad (a la moi – see above)
• stuff them into a pita or burger bun and add veggies
• make them the main part of your plate and serve with roasted veg and some mashed potatoes or rice

The possibilities are endless! Enjoy…!

Anna’s Falafels (adapted from the Wild Rose Cookbook)

INGREDIENTS:

Large can of chickpeas – need about 2 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
2 tsp minced garlic
1 egg or flax egg
1/4 cup tahini
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp parsley or cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup (or so) almond meal/flour
2 tbsp green onions, chopped

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.

2. Place chickpeas, garlic, egg or flax egg, tahini, salt, cumin and turmeric into a food processor and puree until smooth. If you don’t have a food processor, mash by hand rather than in a blender.

3. Transfer to a mixing bowl and add parsley or cilantro and green onions and mix in.

4. Add almond flour bit by bit – judge it by feel, you want the balls to be dry enough to roll but still be sticky. If you need to add more almond flour you can. I estimated what I used to be about 1/4 cup.

5. Roll mixture into small balls in the palm of your hand and put on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray. Bake for 10-15 minutes until crispy on the outside. Enjoy!

Nutritional information is per falafel if recipe makes 14:

QUESTIONS:

• Do you like falafels? Have you ever eaten them before?
• Do you believe in superstitions? It is Friday the 13th after all…! Have a great weekend!