Baked falafel - April 18, 2011

I've been craving falafel lately. I remember buying it from one of the carts on Library Mall when I was a young student at the University of Wisconsin. It was so exotic! So unlike anything my mother served at home, so unrecognizable. I think the first couple times I had it, I had no idea what was in those mysterious balls. It could have been been monkey brains for all I knew. I just thought it was delicious.

No falafel I've had since those days has lived up to my memory, and I didn't really expect this homecooked version to either... especially because I didn't want to deal with the smell or mess of deep frying them. I found this recipe from the blog Chow Vegan. They were tasty, but as expected, the crunchy outside texture was totally lacking.

Mine looked totally different than hers because I 1) did use a food processor, and 2) made my balls much bigger. Instead of 21 small balls, I ended up with only 8 large ones. This was not really a conscious choice, I was just lazy and didn't really read the directions. I wish I had made them smaller though because they took a long time to bake (I did 15 minutes, flipped them for 15, realized they weren't even close to done so then flipped them back for 15 more, and then left them in for another 10 minutes... so almost an hour total!).

Served with pita, cucumber slices, and some raita I whipped up. Richie, having no previous falafel experience to compare to, thought they were great. Success!