Falafel with Tahini Sauce and Pressed Salad

My friend Jen cooks with me regularly and each time we get together we look for recipes we have never made. We both have recommendations from our macrobiotic counselors to eat more oil and fried food. This may seem a little strange, but if you have been studying macrobiotics for a while, you may understand this recommendation already.

Both oil and fried vegetable quality foods can help relax your body. They also help reduce cravings for other rich foods. I frequently have cravings for baked flour products. Eating some fried food several times a week really helps my body relax and feel satisfied and I am not as attracted to overeating bread, chips, nut butters and other related items that are hard on my body and make my system more contracted. I am learning to add tempura and fried tofu and tempeh and other foods to my diet on a regular basis. Fried falafel fits the recommendation.

I have made chickpea patties before, just not falafel. I have friends who are falafel snobs, so I thought it would be hard to get a product that was tasty and satisfying. You may also notice that I ate my falafel with a corn tortilla. I am taking a break from baked flour this month, so no pita bread for me. It’s a bit non-traditional, but still delicious.

During my research, I found a falafel recipe and a new macrobiotic blog at the same time! Here is Briana’s recipe for falafel over at Canadian Macrobiotics.

I wish I could say I followed the recipe perfectly, but it just didn’t work out that way. Here is how I varied from Briana’s recipe:

1.  Soak garbanzo beans. I soaked way more garbanzo beans than I needed for the falafel because I also wanted to cook some to make hummus. So, I guessed at how many I needed for the falafel. I drained the amount I wanted and ground them coarse, but not puréed, in a large food processor. We tried to mash them, but the pieces weren’t getting small enough for my vision of falafel. I wanted the pieces to be super small to give the beans their best chance of cooking during the frying process.

2.  Jen add about 2/3 of one large onion, minced, a whole lot of chopped parsley (a lot more than the 1/4 cup called for in the recipe), a couple minced garlic cloves, 2 tsp ground cumin and a few pinches of sea salt.

3.  I used garbanzo bean flour instead of whole wheat flour. We kept adding it the mixture felt like a good consistency. Then we refrigerated it for two hours.

4.  Before frying the falafel, I made the patties and dredged them in more garbanzo bean flour mixed with the turmeric. I didn’t add the salt, but I might add a little next time. Just not the whole amount she calls for. I used grapeseed oil for frying.

5.  I think everything else is pretty much the same as her recipe, which you can find here.

You can find a tahini sauce over at littleveg. I would add a little lemon juice to the sauce or squeeze a little on your falafel before eating.

Serve the falafel with pressed salad or fresh arugula and pita bread or tortillas. Yum!!